LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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Shetfi2>__G>- 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



NOVISSIMA; 



OR, 



Where do our Departed Go? 



r 

ZBEi^isr.A.itXD O'IR/Zeill.-y-., ID. 3D.. 

D. LIT., "LAVAL." 



"Thou hast made us, O Lord, for Thee; and our heart knoweth 
not rest till it repose in Thee."— St. Augustine. 




BALTIMORE : 

THE BALTIMORE PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
No. rn W. Baltimore Street. 

1886. 



Copyright, 1886, The Baltimore Publishing Company. 



The Library 

OF CONGRRH 



Press of The Baltimore Publishing Companyi 



The Author's Preface. 



The subject of this little book has long haunted me. A 
portion of it was written on my return from Spain to the 
United States over two years ago. The rest was the result of 
an interval of comparative repose during my stay in Ireland. 
It is natural that, as I approach the limit assigned by Scrip- 
ture to the ordinary life of man, I should think a little of 
the "eternal years," and of the goal toward which I am 
traveling. 

If I have, in answering the question, "Where do our de- 
parted go?" only treated of everlasting rewards, it is not 
because I feared to consider the subject of eternal punishment. 
The title given to this work* would have been misleading 
had it not been my purpose to verify it by treating in a 
future volume both of the punishment and purification to be 
undergone after death. 

Fra Angelico, in painting his exquisite "Last Judgment," 
lavished all the splendor of his genius and the affection of 
his gentle nature on the representation of his Saints and 
angels. They are truly heavenly, divine. It is evident that 
he recoiled with horror from the uncongenial task of painting 
hell, with its demons and lost souls. 

I confess that the labor of writing about the supernatural 
destiny of man, about God's infinite generosity, and "the un- 
searchable riches of Christ" — bestowed on us in part in this 

* Novissima— " The Last Things." 



life, but more especially reserved for the life to come — has 
been to me a more congenial work than that of fathoming 
the divine justice in its awards to the wicked. 
• If the germs of thought I have presumed to present to the 
reader in the following pages, can afford him a small portion 
of the comfort they have given me, or if, by meditating on 
them in a leisure momeut, he can lift heart and mind nearer 
to heaven and its glorious realities, my pains shall be amply 
repaid. 

Whatever the un-Christian or the half-Christian world may 
dream or dare to say about eternal punishment, a calm con- 
sideration of the magnificence of God's rewards, and of the 
fitness of the heavenly beatitude to satisfy all the tendencies, 
aspirations, and cravings of human nature at its noblest, 
must result in acknowledging the truth, the beauty, the har- 
mony, and the completeness of the revealed doctrine con- 
cerning the life to come. 

I have avoided controversy, and exposed the teaching of the 
Bible and the Church — the interpreter of the Bible — because 
I wished this little volume to bring light, consolation, strength, 
and rest to the homes that might welcome it, and the troubled 
of heart who would chance to peruse its pages. 

BERXARD O'REILLY. 
Dublin, September 29, 1885, 
Feast of St. Michael the Archangel. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

Introductory, . . . . . . . .'•'.. 1 

CHAPTER II. 
With Christ, 18 

CHAPTER III. 
" To be Dissolved and be with Chrtst " — The Yearning, 34 

CHAPTER IV. 
With Christ at the Fount of Life— The Realization, . 52 

CHAPTER V. 
Within the Ocean Depths of Light and Life, . . 09 

CHAPTER VI. 

Still Among the Depths, . . . . . .83 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Society Enjoyed in God's Heavenly Empire, . 100 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Among the Multitudes of the Blessed in Christ's 

Human Kingdom, Ill 

CHAPTER IX. 
Lost Among the Human World of Heaven, . .121 

CHAPTER X. 
An Hour in Heaven with the Angels, . . . . 138 



VI CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XI. 
The Place Itself, 153 

CHAPTER XII. 
The Place Itself — Its Physical Conditions, . . 168 

CHAPTER XIII. 
The Empire of Charity, 185 

CHAPTER XIV. 
The Belief in the Resurrection of the Body, . . 200 

CHAPTER XV. 
The New Birth of Mankind, 217 

CHAPTER XVI. 

The General Judgment, 233 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Christ's Human Empire After the Resurrection, . 250 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
The Triumph of Christ, 265 

CHAPTER XIX. 
The Utmost Goal of Human Aspiration and Progress, 285 

CHAPTER XX. 
How to Find Heaven on Earth, 302 

CHAPTER XXI. 
The Eternity of Heaven, 321 



SYNOPSIS. 

CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

We all ask ourselves the question: "Where do our departed 
go?'' It has been asked by all mankind in the past, as it is at 
present — A belief in the survival of the soul and in a future state 
underlying this question — The pagans believed in a future life — 
Glorious witnesses of this truth and of a belief in the resurrec- 
tion of the body among the Hebrew race — The seven Machabee 
martyrs and their mother — St. Paul attests the faith of his race — 
Apostolic testimony to the Christian belief — Christian heroism 
and self-sacrifice founded on the hope of eternal rewards — Armies 
of the self-sacrificing in both hemispheres — ' ' The perfect way ' ' 
and "the treasure in heaven." 

CHAPTER II. 

WITH CHRIST. 

The rest which death gives to the weary — The rest which the 
true Christian looks forward to — To be with Christ everlastingly — 
Christ gave us a foretaste of our destiny in being on earth our 
Emmanuel, "God with us" — In heaven we are to be " with 
God" — "God with us" — Preludes to the incarnation in the old 
law — The angel Jehovah — God's intercourse with Moses, and His 
abiding with the Hebrew people — "Show me Thy glory," spoke 
the yearning of the human soul — Our Emmanuel coming among 
us " in a cloud " — How He made His divinity to be felt by those 
who approached Him — His Spirit communicated to Mary and 
Joseph, and to other personages — The ecstasy of the transfigura- 
tion a foretaste of paradise — The risen Christ "walking with" 
the disciples of Emmaus. 

CHAPTER III. 

"to be dissolved and be with christ" — the yearning. 

St. Paul before and after his conversion — Raised up to paradise 
while still in the body — Preaching " the unsearchable riches of 



via SYNOPSIS. 

Christ, " ' ' the charity of Christ which surpasseth all knowledge' ' — 
"Desiring to be dissolved and be with Christ" — The idea of 
"dissolution" to the Christian is the welcome permission to 
depart for home — Examples-: The poor fever-stricken immigrant 
woman and her son ; St. Ferdinand, the conqueror of Cordova 
and Seville, 

CHAPTER, IV, . 

WITH CHRIST AT THE FOUNT OF LIFE — THE REALIZATION. 

What constitutes the life eternal ? The possession of God by- 
clear knowledge and love — The Eucharistic Sacrament and sacri- 
fice a pledge and foretaste of the eternal possession — The banquet 
of earth and the banquet of heaven — The particular judgment 
after death — The first meeting of Christ with the holy soul on the 
frontier of His everlasting kingdom — The "peace be to you ! " on 
passing out of the shadow of the valley of death — The sight of 
His glorified human countenance a preliminary to the Beatific 
Vision — What the "Fount of Life" is — In heaven we are not 
absorbed in the abyss of the Godhead : we preserve our personal 
identity and exercise our proper vital acts — What God gives us 
in heaven — The heaven of Eastern pantheism and the Christian 
heaven — The yearning for the clear sight of God, as expressed in 
the Old Testament — Christ's explicit declaration and definition of 
life eternal — The Beatific Vision — What the council of Florence 
decrees it to be — The great dogmatic fact concerning the bliss of 
the life to come affirms that the blessed ' ' see God as He is in 
Himself ' ' — Xo sleep of the soul after death — A passage from a 
lower to the highest life. 

CHAPTER, V. 

WITHIN THE OCEA.N DEPTHS OF LIGHT AND LIFE — SEEING AND 
POSSESSING GOD. 

We are tried by faith in this life, and rewarded by clear sight 
in the next — This, probably, was also the trial imposed on the 
angels in the beginning — Harmonies, anticipations, and aspira- 
tions in our nature and in the duties of human society — Apostolic 
testimonies bearing on the Beatific Vision — The pursuit and 
possession of knowledge, the tendency and felicity of the human 
mind — The supreme good the necessary object of the heart's 
desires — Both of these necessary aspirations and appetites of 



/SYNOPSIS. • IX 

rational nature fulfilled in the Beatific Vision— Supernaturalness 
of this Vision and the consequent felicity — Illustrations — St. Paul 
explains our present imperfect knowledge and longings, and 
their fulfillment — What takes place in the Beatific Vision— The 
embrace of God our Father— Illustrations. 

CHAPTER VI. 

STILL AMONG THE DEPTHS. 

The doctrine of the clear sight of God immediately after 
death, the belief of the early Christian ages — St. Irenceus, martyr 
— St. Gregory Nazianzen — St. Gregory of Nyssa— St. John 
Chrysostom — St. Augustine — St. John Damascene— How the 
"light of glory" elevates and enlarges the mind — Analogies 
from the natural world and science — The will or affections 
simultaneously and harmoniously elevated, enlarged, perfected — 
The love or charity of heaven proportioned to the knowledge 
there given — Scope of the knowledge conveyed in tho Beatific 
Vision — Helps and illustrations toward understanding its im- 
mensity — Its blissfulness derived from the perfect insight into 
the nature and operations of the Godhead— Inability of the 
human intellect in our present state to sound these divine 
depths— Besides God, the primary object of this clear sight, all 
outside of God, are known and seen perfectly— His mysteries and 
the whole course of His providence — The heavenly empire, its 
worlds and inhabitants — The material universe, its substances 
and laws. 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE SOCIETY ENJOYED IN HEAVEN. 

I. The parents of regenerated humanity — The companionship, 
of Christ and of those who were upon earth called His parents — 
Bliss arising from the clear sight of Christ in heaven, and from 
intercourse with Him— His beautiful character, as known through 
the gospels, the object of intense and enthusiastic study in our 
day — Incomparably greater the knowledge of Him enjoyed by 
the blessed — St. Bonaventure's ecstatic prayer to Christ — We 
cannot study Christ in His earthly career without finding by His 
side the ^Blessed Mother and St. Joseph — We cannot dissociate 
them from Him in heaven — They are near Him where He thrones 
as King and Head over the elect of our race. 



X SYNOPSIS. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

AMONG THE MULTITUDES OF THE BLESSED. 

II. The society of the Saints and elect — Theirs is the assem- 
blage of the truest, best, and loveliest — The friendship of such an 
assemblage — A pause to consider what is this moral perfection 
which renders the Saints in heaven so admirable — Transfiguration 
of the entire man in the life to come — Analogies and illustra- 
tions — The present life too short for the earnest worker to attain 
perfection in anything — The mighty moral growth witnessed 
here a guarantee of the perfection attained hereafter — St. Paul's 
witness — Glimpses of paradise. 

CHAPTER IX. 

LOST AMONG THE HUMAN WORLD IN HEAVEN ITS IMMENSITY. 

1. Christ's human kingdom in heaven — Intoxicating effect of 
beholding such countless numbers of the glorious and the good — 
The felicity derived from the friendship, the love, and merited 
praise of such a kingdom — The holy ties of earth bind souls 
together in heaven — Examples : Who those are who ' ' shine 
like stars ' ' among these multitudes of the good and great — Holy 
•families — Holy Patriarchs — Peoples who have kept the faith — 
The ancient Hebrews — Modern peoples. 

2. Population of Christ's human kingdom in heaven — What 
may be, at present, their real numbers — Bases for forming an 
estimate — How we are to interpret the words of Christ about 
''the small number of the elect" and the "narrow gate" — 
Those who labor among the masses know how many there are 
who are faithful to God — If we may compute the number of the 
elect at one thousand millions, the present estimated population 
of the globe — If so, what glory and felicity to be one of such a 
kingdom! — Illustrations — The real nature and source of social 
happiness: To feel that those we are with are our own; loving 
us, beloved by us, and deserving of our utmost love. 

CHAPTER X. 

FROM THE HUMAN TO THE ANGELIC SOCIETY — AN HOUR WITH THE 
ANGELS IN HEAVEN. 

1. Lingering to count accurately the millions of the blessed — 
Everything in eternity partakes of the infinite — In the Middle 



SYNOPSIS. XI 

Ages all men sought to die well — Men then remembered Christ's 
bestowing from the cross paradise on the penitent criminal 
crucified with Him — In these Christian ages the oppressed and 
suffering multitudes were not all excluded from Christ's grace 
and love — We may, without exceeding, estimate Christ's kingdom 
on high at three thousand millions. 

2. Christ's Angelic Empire — It is that of our brethren and 
friends ; our own also — Its population — Testimonies from Scrip- 
ture — The Book of Job asks if there "is any numbering" of 
them?— The "scientific imagination" of the theologian and the 
Christian readily adopts the grandest views of God's works — 
St. Denis, the Areopagite, and St. Thomas Aquinas — The 
latter' s doctrine and estimates most worthy of our acceptance — 
The angelic world numbering more substances than the whole 
inferior creation — We are safe in estimating the population of the 
angelic empire as incomparably superior to the human — St. John's 
vision of both of these worlds — Catholic theologians adopt the 
theory of the Areopagite about the division of the angels into 
three hierarchies, each including three orders : nine divisions in 
all — Nine concentric and subordinate worlds — Such is the angelic 
society — Magnificence of this subject of study on earth and con- 
templation in heaven — Glory and bliss of this fellowship. 

CHAPTER XI. 

THE PLACE ITSELF — THE LAND OF THE LIVING. 

The Prophet Baruch's sublime conception of it—Ideas of the 
location of heaven — A world created apart — Bellarmine's concep- 
tion of it — The immensity of the heavenly world and the Beatific 
Vision — St. Ignatius Loyola sees God in all things — We need to 
expand our minds in thinking of divine things — Every part of 
this heavenly empire accessible to the blessed — How easy inter- 
course with all its parts will be even after the resurrection — 
Illustrations — Magnificence of this empire — It is called m Scrip- 
ture the bride, and, sometimes, the dwelling place of the bride — 
This argues the utmost magnificence the Bridegroom can display — 
It is the country and home of God's beloved children — Illustration 
from parental love — The paradise and garden of delights — Mag- 
nificence and glory of its inhabitants. 



Xll SYNOPSIS. 

CHAPTER Xn. 

PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF THE HEAVENLY EMPIRE. 

These conditions are in harmony with the final perfection of 
the inhabitants — Analogy founded on the conditions for life on 
earth — Everything in the supernal world will satisfy the exalted 
imagination and the purified sensibility of man — St. John's 
descriptions imply all this — Comparison of the earthly Paradise 
with the heavenly — The heavenly prepared as a reward for the 
Saints — Social condition in harmony — Unspeakable happiness and 
greatness of this empire — God willed man from the beginning to 
set his heart on it — Impulses — Comparison with the greatest and 
happiest of earthly realms — Solomon's wisdom and folly — David's 
aspirations. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

HEAVEN BEFORE THE RESURRECTION — THE EMPIRE OF CHARITY. 

The Church of heaven and the Church on earth — What is seen in 
the blessed city of God : The altar of the Lamb — What is seen 
in the Church on earth: "AH nations and tribes" around the 
altar of the Lamb — Wherever the children of the Church are 
encamped, the armies of angels ascending and descending — 
Divine security and unchangeableness of the city of God on 
earth — "God in her midst — She shall not be moved" — The 
charity which is the soul of the communion of Saints — Heaven 
"the kingdom of perfect charity" — "The charity of Christ 
presseth us" also — The two great armies of charity here below — 
Their labors and creations — Charity of men and women in the 
world — Example. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

* BELIEF IN THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY. 

The Christian religion founded on the fact of Christ's Resur- 
rection — Witnesses to the fact : The dogma of the resurrection 
before Christ; Christ's teaching; Facts of resurrection before 
Christ ; Persons restored to life by Christ ; Moses and Elias at 
the Transfiguration ; Resurrection of Lazarus ; The question, 
"Who has come back to tell ns of the life to come?" Christ 
has j Miracles of the Apostles in confirmation of this fact ; 
Stephen dying beholds Christ in heaven ; The world has accepted 
Christianity founded on this fact, and on the belief in the resur- 



SYNOPSIS. Xlll 

1'ection — St. Paul's testimony: He saw Christ last of all the 
Apostles and Disciples ; His doctrine on the resurrection — The 
plea of "impassibility" put in by unbelievers — Magnificent 
horizons opened up by our belief. 

CHAPTER XV. 

THE NEW BIRTH OF MANKIND. 

St. Paul — Gospel of the resurrection — Christ's prediction — 
Events preceding the general resurrection — St. Paul's teaching 
and description of the event itself — The consummation of the 
Creator's work in the physical world — Clothing a barren conti- 
nent with verdure and filling it with animal life, a work of 
Omnipotence, helping us to understand the new birth of man- 
kind — With Him is the secret and the fount of life — St. Paul on 
the new bodily life— Objection : The total material changes 
occurring periodically in the human frame — "Which body shall 
we rise in ? Most probably the body consigned to the grave — 
The veneration of all ages and races for the remains of the 
dead — Violation of tombs by the Reformers and the Roundheads — 
Their example imitated by the French Revolutionists — French 
scientists desecrating Egyptian tombs — Desecration now openly 
practiced in the name of science — Reverence of the Church for 
the human body — Anointed temples of the Holy Ghost — Christian 
burial, a depositing in the furrows the seed for the future spring- 
tide — God giveth life and increase — St. Paul's text further ex- 
amined — Coming down from heaven of the angelic and human 
spirits — Souls from the Limbus or intermediate world: fallen 
angels and fallen men — The sounding of the trumpet— The fairest 
sight ever beheld by the Creator Himself. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

THE RESURRECTION OF JUDGMENT. 

God's triumph— A favorite subject with artists in the Christian 
ages — The mystery of free-will and divine providence cleared 
up — Man enlightened from the beginning about his supernatural 
destiny — Free to serve or not to serve God and gain heaven — 
Helps toward securing his eternal happiness — God, through 
Christ Crucified, taught the world the infinite value of the 
heavenly treasure, and the infinite loss entailed by its forfeiture — 



xiV SYNOPSIS. 

Ttie book of the crucifix — The book of judgment — Hell is the 
loss of Christ — The judgment — Preliminaries — The scene as 
described by Christ — The two-fold law of charity, the soul of all 
divine legislation — Why Christ bases on its observance or viola- 
tion the award He pronounces — God wills us to pay the debt 
we owe Himself to the poor and suffering who hold His place — 
Timeliness and necessity of insisting on this divine law of 
brotherly charity in our age — How and where we can find on our 
road Christ in the persons of the needy and suffering — Golden 
opportunities — Example of St. Francis of Assisi — Confirmation 
of the Christian doctrine on heaven and hell from ancient 
Persian literature. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

THE TRANSFIGURATION OF THE BLESSED. 

Christ's glorious human empire — We must take the infallible 
Church's interpretation of the Scriptural doctrine of the Resurrec- 
tion — Christ makes of each blessed human soul, on the last day, 
a "quickening spirit" like His own — The risen bodies of the 
blessed must bear ' ' the image ' ' of the heavenly Adam — Quali- 
ties or "gifts" of these bodies: Incorruption or impassibility: 
lightsomeness ; agility or power; explanations of the holy 
Father's subtility or spirituality ; analogies borrowed from the 
teachings of modern science ; imponderable fluids, their subtility, 
energy, velocity ; universal ether and its agency and spirit-like 
substance and qualities ; the Transfiguration of Christ, and that 
of each of His blessed — Peculiar happiness of soul and body 
auising from this re-union and this Transfiguration — This happi- 
ness a compensation for bodily privations and sufferings in this 
life — Christ's triumphant ascension. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE TRIUMPH OF CHRIST. 

The preludes to the Wedding Feast — -Exaltation after humili- 
ation — Spoils won by the cross — Numbers added to the elect by 
the Church — The flock gathered into heaven by the Good Shep- 
herd — The regal progress of our King — The select bands in the 
army of Saints — They sing Te Deum Laudamus as they go — 
The LXXXVIII Psalm — Joys of eternity and joys of earth — In 



SYNOPSIS. XV 

heaven all have the perfect power to enjoy — The divine har- 
monies of heaven — Human feet treading the soil of the heavenly 
empire — It blooms afresh beneath the feet of Christ triumphant — 
Beautiful legends about St. Francis of Assisi — "I have said, ye 
are gods, and all sons of the Most High" — The Bridegroom and 
the Bride — ''King of kings and Lord of lords." 

CHAPTER XIX. 

THE SUPPER OP THE LAMB. 

A royal wedding feast the ideal on earth of magnificence and 
enjoyment — Even among the poor a wedding means sumptuosity 
and hospitality unbounded — What we know it to be among the 
wealthy — The banquets of Assuerus — What we are to under- 
stand by the Supper of the Lamb — It inaugurates a new era in 
heaven — Members of the elect to whom heaven is new — Magnifi- 
cent pageant of their arrival at the Feast — True conception of 
the banqueting place — Two worlds, the angelic and human, 
seated at the Banquet — The heavenly fare at that Supper — 
Anticipations on earth of that divine Food: "I am the Bread 
of Life." " Take ye and eat : This is My Body. " "Drink ye 
all of this: For this is My Blood." "I will not drink from 
henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I shall 
drink it with you new in the kingdom of My Father" — What 
" this fruit of the vine " is — Partaking of the Divinity — Christ's 
instruction to His Disciples : "I am the Vine. . . . You 
the branches" — The cup which man and angel drink at that 
Feast — The Father's joy in giving ; the children's bliss in re- 
ceiving — In what consists the "newness" of the wine given at 
that Feast — 1. Man in heaven only a spiritual being before the 
Resurrection ; now he lives there in body — After the resurrec- 
tion the wine of the Beatific Vision intoxicates body and soul — 
New transports of that hour — The sight of Christ with our 
bodily eyes — 2. Intoxicating effect of beholding with the bodily 
sense the new heavens and their angelic and human inhabi- 
tants — It will be new for the parents of regenerated humanity 
to have their family around them there. . . . New for the 
Eternal Father to welcome to His kingdom the entire family of 
the elect — Joy, like "the rush of a river, inundating the city 
of God." 



XVI SYNOPSIS. 

CHAPTER XX. 

HOW TO FIXD HEAVEN ON EARTH. 

The end in heaven; "God all in all" — Divine love finds 
means to be "all in all" to us, even in this life. 

I. God present in all things — He fills heaven and earth : the 
immense and infinite — Present in all things as Creator, Preserver, 
Ruler — Easy to find Him — Present in man. 

II. God works for us in all the energies and activities of the 
material, intellectual, social, and religious world — St. Paul to the 
Corinthians : ' "All things are yours ; " " the sufferings of time ; ' ' 
the glory to come" — God directs all things toward our good — 
Human infirmity supplemented by almighty power and divine 
generosity — The Three divine Persons working for us — The 
mystery of free-will — How man may work divinely for God — 
St. Francis Xavier — A docile instrument in the hand of God — 
Human weakness transformed into divine energy — How attentive 
meditation can help us — The "Ladder of Jacob" not yet with- 
drawn — The angelic world working for us — And the Saints in 
heaven — St. Paul's example : "Who shall separate us from the 
love of Christ ? ' ' — To die for Christ the privilege of the few — To 
live and labor for Christ that of many — "We should be spurred 
on to work by the prospect of winning an everlasting inherit- 
ance — "What we see gold-seekers daring and enduring. 

CHAPTER XXI. 

THE ETERNITY OF HEAVEN. 

Precautions taken by business men to invest and secure 
money — Stability and perpetuity a great ground of confidence— 
Vain to seek either outside of God — Two memorable examples — 
The Christian's foundation — God and His eternity — Eternal life 
as explained in the light of revealed truth — The last article of 
the Creed — Utterances of our Lord and His Apostles on eternal 
or everlasting life — The Beatific Vision and the partaking of 
God's own life in heaven imply eternity — Conclusion : Every- 
thing divine in the heavenly life ; therefore its duration should 
be divine, eternal — The everlasting society of God, His angels 
and Saints — The eternity of the heavenly universe ; all our own, 
for evermore — The eternal God possessed eternally. 



NOVISSIMA. 



CHAPTER I 



INTRODUCTORY. 



"Where are they gone, of yore 

My best delight, 
Dear and more dear, though now 

Hidden from sight? 

— Lady Nairn. 

" Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God ; believe 
also in Me." — St. John, xiv, 1. 

THE QUESTION ASKED BY ALL MEN. 

Where is the man or woman whose heart has 
not been troubled by the thought of that dread and 
mysterious hereafter, toward which the stream of life 
irresistibly hurries them ? 

Around us, while the skeptic's doubts come out of 
the darkness, and take shape like the phantoms of a 
horrible dream, we hear our contemporaries asking 
aloud, with concern and with fear : Whether the 
generations which preceded us have been as utterly 
blotted out of life, of all personal existence, as the 
grass of the prairie over which the flames have 
passed destroying the very roots of every green 
thing, as the races of geological monsters which 
have left behind no living representative ? 



2 XOVISSIMA. 

\Ye who, arrived near the limit assigned to hitman 
life, behold the shadows fast lengthening on our 
road, and the sun about to disappear into a world to 
us unknown, cannot help seeing in his setting the 
image of our own existence. With troubled hearts 
we, too, ask ourselves : What sphere will receive our 
spirit when our day is ended ? Into what company 
shall we be ushered in parting with this body of 
clay ? 

For we know that all living peoples, as well as 
those who have gone before us, are unanimous in 
believing that the soul survives the dissolution of 
the body. And we know as well, that they asked 
themselves in their day, as we do now, with anxiety 
not unmixed with fear : Where do our departed go ? 

The question, and the grave thoughts it suggests, 
will not be put away, in the evening of life espe- 
cially. Like travelers who have climbed a steep 
hill after a long road, we look back to find those 
who started with us, and perceive, with a shudder, 
that few, very few indeed, are by our side. Where 
are they ? 

We remember the aged to whom we looked up 
for guidance and counsel on beginning life's 
journey ; the strong, the wise, the venerable, on 
whom our soul leaned for support ; they dropped 
away, one after the other, like ripe fruit from the 
overladen tree. Does the earth cover all that we 
loved and revered in them ? 

Our own parents too — the father who taught us 
all generosity of aim and deed ; the mother whose 
tenderness was deeper than the springs of ocean, 
whose pure and loving soul was to us as God's angel 
in human form ; they, too, in their turn, closed 
their race of devotion and suffering, with their eyes 



NOVISSIMA. 6 

looking fondly for the dawn of a better life, in 
which we should be reunited with them. Is this 
reunion in a blissful eternity only a delusion sent by 
nature to deceive the hopes of earth's dearest and 
best ? Have we lost forever the sweet companion- 
ship of those who first discoursed with us on immor- 
tality? Are we never again to be folded within 
those dear arms ? Shall their loved voices never 
more make music in our souls ? 

Every day, as we advance toward the goal, we 
hear fond parents mourning by our side over the 
grave of children cut off in the springtide of lovely 
womanhood, or a manhood full of brilliant promise. 
They were rearing children for heaven ; they 
watched over them as if they had to keep angels in 
the body free from earthly stain, while training them 
to all earthly heroism. Is there no heaven, then, for 
the bright, pure spirits departed from their home? 

Within the Christian home, as outside of it, the 
young are called to watch by the death-bed of their 
best beloved ; nothing soothes for them the pang of 
separation but the faith in a better life, and the 
certain hope of meeting there those who are a part 
of themselves. Is there, then, to be no reunion 
hereafter ? 

Has all mankind conspired to cheat themselves 
with this magnificent dream of a future life and a 
bettor world? Let us meditate seriously on this 
thought at the very threshold of our inquiry. 

Has all mankind, therefore, believed, and believed 
firmly, in a future state ? Yes ; all ! 

ATTESTING VOICES FROM THE TOMB. 

Examine, in every portion of the habitable globe, 
the records and monuments of the most ancient 



4 KOVISSIMA. 

empires; consult the religious beliefs and the 
funereal customs of races the most civilized or the 
most savage ; from every land and age, from the lit- 
eratures of the pagan world and the world worship- 
ing the one true God, from the tombs of Egypt, 
Assyria, India, China, and Japan, as well as from 
the sepulchres of Palestine and Etruria, come solemn 
voices attesting the soul's immortality — everlasting 
rewards for the good, everlasting punishments for 
the wicked. From the reverently preserved remains 
of the half-famished tribes wandering around Hud- 
son's Bay or through the forests of Alaska, from the 
sepulchral mounds of races long extinguished, scat- 
tered over the valleys of the Ohio and the Missis- 
sippi, down through Mexico and Central America, 
and the vast regions of the Southern Continent to 
Cape Horn — the care bestowed on the dead of yes- 
terday, as well as the love and respect paid to the 
bodies of those who died thousands of years ago, 
alike proclaim that all these races believed in the 
survival of the soul. 

More than that. The care taken by men, while 
living, to secure for their remains after death a safe 
and inviolable resting-place, as well as the sentiment 
in the survivors prompting to carry out the wish of 
the dying, and impelling children to give to parents 
the honorable sepulture which they hoped for in 
return — all spoke of the primitive revelation prom- 
ising not only the life to come, but the revival of 
the body to partake thereof. 

SURVIVAL OF THE SOUL. 

Leaving all discussion of "the resurrection of the 
flesh" to a future chapter, w 7 e insist upon this una- 
nimity with which mankind in the past, as in the 



NOVISSIMA. 5 

present, all civilizations and religions, affirm the 
immortality of the soul, its future accountability to 
its Maker and Judge, and the everlasting happiness 
of the good, as an offset to the proud, pretentious 
and shallow few, who put out the eyes of their own 
intelligence lest they should see the necessity of the 
life to come, the magnificence of its rewards, and 
the salutary terrors of its threatened punishments. 

The pagan Cicero and the pagan Plato revolted in 
their day against the few Materialists whose practice 
and teaching aimed at depriving the toiling and 
suffering masses — as well as all who set virtue and 
conscience above the honors, enjoyments, and happi- 
ness of the present life — of the comforting hope of 
a blissful immortality. And so, even now, heathen 
philosophy and heathen religions rebuke the pur- 
blindness of the false science, which, seated in the 
chair at Oxford, from which Roger Bacon taught, 
seeks to extinguish in men's souls, one after the 
other, the lights and the hopes which made Bacon's 
life so bright and happy amid toil, and obloquy, and 
persecution. 

He only gave utterance to this article of the uni- 
versal pagan creed who wrote : 

'Tis the Divinity that stirs within us, 

'Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter, 

And intimates eternity to man. 

If there's a Power above us 

(And that there is, all nature cries aloud 
Through all her works), He must delight in virtue ; 
And that which He delights in must be happy.'* 

GLORIOUS WITNESSES AMONG THE HEBREAV RACE. 

But whatever doubt obscured or weakened the 
traditional faith of the heathen nations, among the 

*Addison. 



6 N0VISSI3IA. 

Hebrew race, holding fast to revealed truth, there 
was no doubt on the cardinal doctrine of the life to 
come. From the lips of none, among this chosen 
people, may we learn a lesson on this matter more 
profitably than from the glorious martyrs, who, amid 
torments, testified to their belief in the life eternal 
and its rewards. 

Let us seat ourselves, therefore, in spirit among the 
half-pagan, half-Jewish crowd, which surrounds the 
mother of the Machabees and her seven sons, as the 
children first and then the mother, each in succession 
sacrifices limb and life rather than sin against the 
law of God. The oldest has already suffered his 
long agony and triumphed beneath the eyes of the 
heroic mother. The second, undismayed, has en- 
dured tortures unspeakable. " When he was at the 
last gasp," the sacred historian tells us, "he said 
thus (to King Antiochus) : ' O most wicked man, 
thou indeed destroyest us out of this present life. 
But the King of the world will raise us up, who die 
for His laws, in the resurrection of eternal life/ " * 

The third son, in like manner, allowed the execu- 
tioners to torture and mutilate as their ingenuity 
taught them. Limb after limb was cut off. "And 
when he was required, he quickly put forth his 
tongue and courageously stretched out his hands, 
and said with confidence: ' These I have from 
Heaven, but for the laws of God I now make little 
of them, because I hope to receive them again from 

Him. ? "t 

Even so the fourth: "When he was now ready to 
die, he spoke thus: 'It is better, being put to death 
by men, to look for hope from God, to be raised up 

* 2 Machabees, vii, 9. t Ibidem, 10-11. 



NOVissraA- 7 

again by Him. For, as to thee, (King Antiochus), 
thou shalt have no resurrection unto life/ " * 

We must pause in the midst of this fearful 
tragedy to listen to the words of that heroic mother, 
whose sublime spirit suffered and triumphed in each 
of her boys. It was she who had instilled into 
them, with the milk of infancy, the fear and love of 
God — that constancy which no torture and no bribe 
could move. Hear how she repeats before Antiochus 
and his satellites the lesson so often taught before : 

" Now the mother was to be admired above meas- 
ure, and worthy to be remembered by good men, 
who beheld her seven sons slain in the space of one 
day, and bore it with a good courage for the hope 
that she had in God. And she bravely exhorted 
every one of them in her own language, being filled 
with wisdom, and joining a man's heart to a woman's 
thought : i I neither gave you breath, nor soul, nor life, 9 
she says; 'neither did I frame the limbs of every 
one of you. But the Creator of the world, that 
formed the nativity of man, and that found out the 
origin of all, He will restore to you again in His 
mercy both breath and life, as now you deprive your- 
selves for the sake of His laws.' " f 

The martyrdom of the seventh and the youngest 
raised to a pitch of sublimity never heard of in the 
ancient world, or conceived of by Plato or iEschylus, 
the courage and constancy of mother and son. An- 
tiochus, baffled and beaten in his impious design by 
the unconquerable spirit of parent and children, en- 
deavors to win the only survivor by cajolery and the 
promise of wealth, honor and royal favor. He 
failed. He then turned to the mother. " The king 

* Machabees, vii, 14-15. -f Ibidem, 20-23. 



8 NOVISSIMA. 

called the mother, and counselled her to deal with 
the young man to save his life. . . . She prom- 
ised that she would counsel her son." 

The interest of the courtiers and the crowd is 
excited to the highest degree. Is she going to give 
up to the maddened ferocity of king and executioners 
her only remaining one? Listen again: " I beseech 
thee, my son, look upon heaven and earth, and all 
that is in them ; and consider that God made them 
out of nothing, and mankind also. So thou shalt 
not fear this tormentor; but, being made a worthy 
partner with thy brethren, receive death, that in that 
mercy I may receive thee again with thy brethren." * 

Such is, among the people of God, and before the 
coming of Christ, the most glorious testimony borne 
to the belief in the life to come, the resurrection of 
the dead, the bliss of heaven, and the fearful retri- 
bution in store for the wicked. 

As we meditate together, in the light of such ex- 
amples, the answer to the question, "Where do our 
dead go?" we may well exult at the heroic faith of 
these saints of the Old Testament. Of them, St. 
Paul, the Apostle of this faith, enlarged and perfected 
by Christ, wrote to the Christian Hebrews of his day : 

ST. PAUL CONFIRMS THAT TESTIMONY. 

"Now, of the things which we have spoken, this 
is the sum : We have such a High Priest, who is 
set on the right hand of the throne of Majesty in the 
heavens, a Minister of the Holies, and of the true 
Tabernacle, which the Lord hath pitched, and not 
man.f . . . Having, therefore, a confidence, 
brethren, in the entering into the Holies by the 

* Macliabees, vii, 25-29. t Hebrews, viii, 1-2. 



NOVISSIMA. 9 

blood of Christ, a new and living way which He hath 
dedicated for us through the veil, that is to say, His 
flesh, and a High Priest over the House of God, 
let us draw near with a true heart in fullness of 
faith. . . . Let us hold fast the confession of 
our hope without wavering, for He is faithful that 
hath promised." * 

Be comforted, troubled hearts; and let the light 
from above break gradually, sweetly on your dark- 
ness. See you not that all the faith and hope of 
the world before Christ pointed to heaven, to the 
true Holy of Holies, to the House of God, unbuilt 
by man, and over which Christ our Lord is King? 
Into that house and home the blood of Christ has 
opened to us "a new and living way." 

Now, from the cradle of our race in Eden down 
to this day, survey the generations of believers, who 
have lived, labored, suffered, and died, fixing their 
eyes on the promise of that Redeemer, Restorer, 
and King — on the Hope of the Heaven which His 
blood was to reopen ; on the glorious prospect of the 
Resurrection so openly proclaimed in Antioch by the 
seven Machabee Martyrs and their mother. 

"Now, faith is the substance of things to be 
hoped for; the evidence of things that appear not. 
. . . By faith Abel offered to God a sacrifice 
exceeding that of Cain, by which he obtained a testi- 
mony that he was just, God giving testimony to his 
gifts, and by it being dead yet speaketh. By faith 
Henoch was translated, that he should not see death, 
and he was not found because God had translated 
him. For before his translation he had testimony 
that he pleased God. But without faith it is impos- 

* Hebrews, x, 19-23. 



10 XOVISSI31A, 

sible to please God. For he that cometh to God 
must believe that He is, and is a Rewarder to them 
that seek Him 

"By faith he that is called Abraham obeyed to go 
out into a place which he was to receive for an in- 
heritance ; and he went out, not knowing whither he 
went. By faith he abode in the land, dwelling in 
cottages, with Isaac and Jacob, the co-heirs of the 
same promise. For he looked for a City that hath 
foundations, whose builder and maker is God. . . . 
All these died according to faith, not having received 
the promises, but beholding them afar off, and 
saluting them, and confessing that they are pilgrims 
and strangers on the earth. For they that say these 
things do signify that they seek a country. And 
truly if they had been mindful of that from whence 
they came out, they had doubtless time to return. 
But now they desire a better, that is to say, a 
Heavenly Country. Therefore, God is not ashamed 
to be called their God; for He hath prepared for 
them a City." * 

Such is the living faith of that chosen Hebrew 
race, who were the predecessors and spiritual 
parents of the Christian people. Among them the 
belief in the life and the world to come shines like 
a stream of light along the entire path of their his- 
tory down to Christ; and since His teaching has 
only made the existence of the " Heavenly Country," 
of the "City" with eternal foundations, "whose 
builder and maker is God," a more distinct and 
glorious Reality. 

* Hebrews, xi, 1-16. 



XOVISSIMA. 11 

"LIFE and incorruption brought to light by 

THE GOSPEL. 

"I know whom I have believed/'* writes St. 
Paul from his prison in Rome; "our Saviour Jesus 
Christ, who hath destroyed death, and hath brought 
to light Life and Ineorruption by the Gospel." t It 
was this heroic Apostle of the perfected Revelation, 
who, in penning the sublime eulogy of Hebrew faith 
in the past, wished to nourish that of the new-born 
Christian Church, composed so largely of Hebrew 
converts. 

Persecution and suffering had been the lot of be- 
lievers in the long ages before Christ; persecution 
and suffering are the inheritance held forth to 
Christ's followers; and all this to be accounted as 
nothing in view of the eternal reward. The Hebrew 
Church was personified in Moses, who, "when he 
was grown up, denied himself to be the son of 
Pharoah's daughter, rather choosing to be afflicted 
with the people of God than to have the pleasure of 
sin for a time, esteeming the reproach of Christ 
greater riches than the treasure of the Egyptians. 
For he looked unto the Reward. By faith he left 
Egypt, not fearing the fierceness of the king; for 
he endured as seeing Him that is invisible. % 

This Unseen God and the invisible world in 
which He lives and reigns with His faithful ser- 
vants, the angelic spirits and the spirits of just men, 
is precisely what modern unbelief, . under the 
usurped name of science, would have us look upon 
as the Unknowable. With St. Paul, each of us 
Christians must reply to the skeptic and the mate- 

* 2 Timothy, i, 12. X Hebrews, xi, 24-27. 

t Ibidem, 10. 



1'2 -NOVISSIMA. 

rialist : " I know whom I have believed ! . * Our 
Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath destroyed death." 

Therefore, while turning to the very best account 
this short mortal life in glorifying our Maker, in 
helping our brethren, and in sanctifying ourselves, 
we account earth and all things temporal as of little 
moment, because we, too, look forward to the 
Reward, to that "Life and Incorruption" brought to 
light by the Gospel. 

ATTESTED BY THE HOSTS OF THE SELF-SACKIFICTNG. 

"Were we not sure of this prospect, St. Paul's 
words to the Corinthian Christians of his day might 
literally apply to Christians the whole world over at 
the close of this nineteenth century : " If in this life 
only we have faith in Christ, we are of all men the 
most miserable." * 

Look around you, inside and outside your homes, 
and count those of your acquaintance who try ear- 
nestly and consistently to serve God with their whole 
heart and soul — men and women who, while living 
in the world, and fulfilling every duty of their sta- 
tion with scrupulous fidelity, endeavor to follow 
Christ Crucified by self-denial and self-sacrifice. 
We speak not of churchmen, or persons bound by 
monastic vows to special abnegation, but of the 
secular crowd traveling along the common road of 
life. How many beautiful souls there are among 
the toiling, travel-soiled, over-burdened multitudes ? 

Is their faithful service to go unrewarded ? Is 
their hope of immortality and its repose all vain ? 
Is there for these indefatigable toilers, these patient, 
uncomplaining sufferers, these devoted lovers of the 

*1 Cor.,. xv, 19. 



NOVISSIHA. 13 

poor and the afflicted, no greater assurance of a life 
beyond the grave than there is for the horse, the ass, 
or the mule, that falls down dead by the roadside? 
Is there no more certainty of survival and everlast- 
ing honor for the martyr who gladly bares his breast 
to the persecutor's steel in China or Tonquin than 
there is for the ox or the sheep slaughtered in the 
shambles ? 

Suffering, persecution, martyrdom have not yet 
ceased to be the portion on earth of those who are 
dearest to Christ. It is to all such, in our days, 
that another Apostle also writes from prison and 
from the verge of the grave : " Dearly beloved, 
think not strange the burning heat which is to try 
you, as if some new thing happened to you. But 
if you partake of the suffering of Christ, rejoice that 
when His glory shall appear you may also be glad 
with exceeding joy." * Are we now to believe that 
the future reality will give the lie to both Peter and 
Paul? 

Look abroad into the world and count these 
mighty armies of men and women who have torn 
themselves from home, from all the satisfaction and 
bliss of domestic life, from all the pursuits and 
noble rewards that a legitimate or praiseworthy 
ambition opens up to the well-born, the educated, 
the gifted, and accomplished; they have chosen to 
share Christ's poor and laborious life, while doing 
for the bodies and souls of His people all that the 
experience of nineteen centuries of Christianity 
points out as most needful, most salutary, most 
glorious, and most heroic in self-sacrificing devotion. 
Do you doubt that He desires such imitators or 

*1 St. Peter, iv, 12-13. 



1-4 tfOYlSSIMA. 

holds out to them all that a God can give in the life 
to come ? Then listen to the Gospel narrative : 

" When He was gone forth into the way, a certain 
man, running up and kneeling before Hirn, asked 
Him : ' Good Master, what shall I do that I may 
receive life everlasting ? ' 

"And Jesus said to him : ' Why callest thou Me 
good? None is good but one — God. Thou knowest 
the Commandments : Do not commit adultery, do not 
kill, do not steal, bear not fcdse witness, do no fraud, 
honor thy father and mother. ,' 

SELF-SACRIFICE AXD THE TREASURE IN HEAYEX. 

" But he answering, said to Him : ' Master, all 
these things I have observed from my youth.' And 
Jesus, looking on him, loved him, and said to him : 
'One thing is wanting unto thee; go, sell whatsoever 
thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have 
treasure in heaven ; and come, follow Me ! ' Who, 
being struck sad at that saying, went away sorrow- 
ful, for he had great possessions. " * 

In St. Matthew's narrative of the same incident, 
our Lord says to the young man : " If thou wilt be 
perfect, go, sell what thou hast, . . . and come, 
follow Me." f 

This, then, is the " perfect way " of evangelical 
poverty and self-sacrifice to which Christ invites 
heroic souls, holding out to them, after death, 
the " life everlasting," the mighty "treasure in 
heaven," which is to compensate for all that the 
most heroic can renounce and undergo in this life. 
Hence the pregnant sequel in the next verses. 
"And Peter began to say unto Him: 'Behold, we 

*St. Mark, x, 17-30. T St. Matthew, six, 21. 



KOVISSIMA. 15 

have left all things, and have followed Thee/ Jesus 
answering, said : 'Amen, I say to yon, there is no 
man who hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or 
father, or mother, or children, or lands for My sake 
and for the Gospel who shall not receive an hundred 
times as much, now in this time; houses, and 
brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, 
and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to 
come life everlasting.' " 

The rich young man of the Gospel, frightened by 
the thought of all he should have to give up to follow 
the Master into the narrow way, turned back sad 
and "sorrowful" from his quest. He could not, 
then at least, in spite of his earnest desire of attain- 
ing to the life without end, renounce all the good 
things of the present. If he could have seriously 
reflected on the eternal possession of that " treasure 
in heaven/' how paltry had appeared to him the 
price demanded! 

But the little band among whom Peter was spokes- 
man had given up their all at Christ's first call to 
follow Him. And now, when the young man had 
gone his way, and they are assured of the "persecu- 
tions " that await them in the future, their heroism 
is still further tested by the prophecy of Christ's 
near crucifixion. 

It is not perfect renouncement only, or perfect 
self-denial, which is demanded of those who follow 
Him in the better way, but self-sacrifice and self- 
crucifixion. Oh, what hosts of those noble men 
and women, all through both hemispheres, rise 
up before our mind's eye, ever toiling, like their 
Master and Model, to make earth the foretaste of 



16 tfOVISSIMA. 

heaven, and the children of man the true children 
of God! 

"Olives beloved wherein once mine did live, 

Thinking your thoughts, and walking in your ways, 
On your dear presence pasturing all my days, 
In pleasantness and peace ; whose moods did give 
The measure to my own! how vainly strive 
Poor fancy's fingers, numbed by time, to raise 
The veil of woven years, that from my gaze 
To hide what now you are doth still contrive!" 

What hosts of these, the glory and the crown of 
our humanity, have gone to their rest and their 
reward; other legions, more numerous still, filling 
up the void in their blessed ranks, and continuing to 
sow this earth of ours with the seed of all divine 
virtues ! 

Have these — have all who, since this world came 
into existence, devoted and sacrificed their lives to 
the good of others, prompted by the instincts and 
the hope of their immortality — have they been fol- 
lowing only the light of a " will-o'-the-wisp," which 
went out in utter and eternal darkness on the grave ? 

No! On the contrary. In presence of these 
" clouds of witnesses" to the nobleness of self- 
renouncement, and the divinity of self-sacrifice — wit- 
nesses whose shining ranks stretch back to Calvary 
and beyond it — we solemnly profess our belief that 
charity, the heaven-born love of God, and the self- 
devoting, self-denying, self-sacrifidlig love of the 
brotherhood, shall have its exceeding great reward 
beyond the grave. 

Our soul may be filled with grief and anxiety 
when, in the midst of a Christian society, whose 
moral laws and loftiest virtues all repose on the 
belief in the souPs immortality, and in the eternity 



KOVISSIMA. 17 

of rewards and punishments for deeds done in the 
flesh, false teachers' voices, like notes of discord in 
the divinest of harmonies, are heard denying the 
existence of the life to come. 

THE MASTER'S ANSWER TO THE QUESTION. 

We, who cling with mind and heart to Christ our 
Master, as Ave do to the certainty of our own exist- 
ence ; we, who mourn for the dear ones sent before 
us, and see ourselves brought near the end of our 
pilgrimage — we must not allow materialistic or 
anti-Christian doubts to trouble the serenity of the 
evening of life, or to cloud the eye of our soul as it 
looks upward to the everlasting hills. We must 
place ourselves in spirit at the feet of the Master 
and drink in His dear w orcls : 

" Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in 
God: believe also in Me. In My Father's house 
are many mansions. If it ivere not so I would have 
told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if 
I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, 
and will take you to Myself; that where I am you 
also may be." * 

We know, then, "where our departed go." Not 
in vain do we place all our trust in Him who alone 
is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Even on this 
side of the grave, and while the cold mists of earth 
fall thick and chilling around our path, we feel that 
"this is eternal life to know Thee, the only true 
God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." f The 
firm faith of the present is only the prelude and the 
pledge of the clear knowledge of the future. We 
know that He, who is the Way, hath gone before us, 

* St. John, xiv, 1, 2, 3. t St. John, xvii, 3. 



18 NOVISSIMA. 

and taken possession of the Father's house with its 
many mansions, of the land of the living with its 
vast empire and its unfading glories. We know 
that those who, either yesterday or long ago, parted 
with us on the road, and died believing in Him, 
trusting in His promises, and loving Him with the 
last pulsation of their hearts, are ivith Him. 

"Where they rejoice to be, 
There is the land for me ; 
Fly time, fly speedily ; 
Come life and light ! 



CHAPTER II. 



WITH CHRIST. 



My feet are wearied and my hands are tired, 

My soul oppressed ; 
And with desire have I long desired 

Rest— only Rest. 

— Ryan. 

To the half-believing multitude, weary of bootless 
toil, weighed down by oppression and care, despair- 
ing Of seeing wrong righted, or the earth yielding 
to their sweat even a sufficiency, death, the seeming 
end of all things, might be looked forward to and 
welcomed for the rest it brings to hand, and head, and 
heart. And there are many, very many, among the 
wealthy, the fortunate, and the great, to whom life, 
with all its advantages, is so full of bitterness, so 
intolerable a burthen, that they long to be at rest in 
the grave. 



NOVISSIMA. . 19 

THE REST FOR WHICH THE CHRISTIAN YEARNS. 

But, the true Christian, whether the poorest peas- 
ant, the most ill-requited laborer, or the man or 
woman placed- in the highest position, and conscious 
of the heaviest responsibility, the rest which comes 
with the end of. present toil and care, is not the 
mere cessation from labor, nor the mere relief from 
sorrow and trouble. 

It is, above all things, for pure and lofty souls the 
release from all the moral dangers^from the fear of 
temptation and sin, from the terrors of the judgment 
following speedily after death, and from the uncer-: 
tainty of one's eternal fate. For the man or the 
woman who look their last upon earth, who have 
kept the faith, fought the good fight, and been true 
to the God of their salvation, the Judge has comforts 
in store for the last hour, and sweet sentiments of 
filial trust, enabling the departing soul to look for- 
ward to meeting, on the frontier of His kingdom, 
with the Creator, the Father, the Saviour, in whose 
hand is peace, and rest, and length of days. 

We know in whom we believe, in whom we trust, 
and whom we serve, we strive to live, to labor, to 
suffer for Him here; we make His will our own. 
Is it not from His lips we shall hear : 

" Well done, thou good and faithful servant ! . . . 
Enter into the joy of thy Lord!" 

Our rest is to be with Christ, to be with Him 
everlastingly, in the joys of His most glorious and 
most blissful existence. 

Who has ever thought out fully and explained to 
the world what it is to be with Christ in His king- 
dom — to be with Him everlastingly f 

This companionship and union is the supernatural 



20 KOVISSiMA. 

destiny for which man was created and redeemed. 
It is the end of all God's providence and govern- 
ment here below. It is to secure this companion- 
ship, this union with Christ, and with the glorious 
society of angels and saints, forming one moral 
person with Him, that God disposes all things, 
counting on man's free co-operation with His grace. 

THE DESTINY FOR WHICH MAX WAS CREATED. 

To be with Christ, with God everlastingly, is our 
destiny. The following chapters will set forth the 
meaning of these words, and tell the reader some- 
thing of the mighty and blissful reality. 

In this present chapter, Ave would fain have you 
meditate with us how that same Eternal Word and 
Wisdom by whom God created all things and 
through whom He disposeth all tilings in conformity 
with that sublime end, wished by tiie Incarnation 
to be "God with us" upon earth, in order to teach 
us to be worthy of being ourselves, as it were, 
God's, the adopted sons of God, with Him eternally 
in Heaven. 



I. 

GOD WITH US. 



What was that near and sensible presence, that 
familiar, almost, and friendly intercourse, with 
which God honored Moses all through the course of 
the latter's long mission and arduous labors of free- 
ing and guiding God's p'eople toward the Promised 
Land? The interpreters of Holy Writ have seen 
in the Angel-Jehovah, through whose ministry the 



KOVISSIMA. 21 

miracles were performed in Egypt, the Law de- 
livered on the Mount, and the constitutions of 
the Twelve Confederated Tribes were framed, the 
Person of the Eternal Word thus veiling His 
Majesty under the appearance of an angel and pre- 
luding the Incarnation. Be that as it may, and 
whether it be really Jehovah Himself who spoke 
directly to the Hebrew deliverer, or an angel com- 
missioned to speak in His name and act with His 
power and authority, Moses, so far as we can judge, 
reverenced and worshiped the Speaker, Revealer, 
and Guide as very God. The nearness to that 
veiled Majesty, from the day when the vision 
appeared amid the burning bush to Mount Sinai, 
with its alternate scenes of abject terror and insolent 
idol-worship, produced in Moses not only resistless 
yearning to see, without cloud or veil, the divine 
Being who spoke to him, but also unbounded love 
for God's people. 

AYhen the idolaters have been signally punished 
for their sin, this love of charity for the people 
breaks forth in the touching prayer: te /I beseech 
Thee, this people hath sinned a heinous sin, and 
they have made themselves gods of gold. Either 
forgive this trespass, or, if Thou do not, strike me 
out of the book which Thou hast written.' And the 
Lord answered him : ( He that hath sinned against 
Me, him will I strike out of My book ; but go thou 
and lead this people whither I have told thee ; My 
angel shall go before thee.' ; ' * 

Here it is plainly intimated that it is the Lord of 
Angels Himself who has been the Revealer ; that 
He it is against whom, while in communication 

* Exodus, xxxii, 31-34. 



22 KOVISSIMA. 

with Moses on the near mountain-top, the sin of 
idolatry was committed. He is unwilling further to 
continue this nearness to "a stiff-necked people. " 

"And Moses said to the Lord : ' Thou commandest 
me to lead forth this people, and Thou dost not let 
me know whom Thou wilt send with me, especially 
whereas Thou hast said : " I know thee by name, and 
thou hast found favor in My sight." If, therefore, 
I have found favor in Thy sight, show me Thy face, 
that I may know Thee, and may find grace before 
Thy eyes. Look upon Thy people, this nation.' 



"And the Lord said: 'My face shall go before 
thee, and I will give thee rest.' And Moses said : 
'If Thou Thyself dost not go before, bring us not 
out of this place. For how shall we be able to 
know, I and Thy people, that we have found grace 
in Thy sight unless Thou walk with us, that we may 
be glorified by all the people that dwell upon the 
earth ? ? " * 

Then follows the ardent request that the Godhead 
should unveil Himself to Moses, and the answer, 
" I will show thee all good" 

So, as we see in this pregnant prophetic passage, 
the Hebrew leader would not be satisfied to have, 
in the fulfillment of his mission, the assurance that 
God would be with them by His presence in power, 
by the terror of His mighty as shown in Egypt, and 
signified by the words, " My face shall go before 
thee." He wanted an indwelling of the Godhead 
with His people ; He was to " walk with them ; " 

* Exodus, xxxiii, 12-16. 



KOVISSIMA. 23 

He whose being is " all good," the infinite truth and 
the infinite perfection and loveliness, must be in 
their midst as their very own to satisfy the craving 
of the true of heart and noble of soul among them. 

WE YEARN TO BEHOLD GOD FACE TO FACE. 

Moses spoke the yearning of the human soul 
enlightened by faith and undismayed by conscious 
sin: " Shew me Thy glory! " But the privilege of 
beholding in its essence the unveiled and awful 
majesty of God is one reserved to the supernatural 
perfection of man in the life to come. Neither our 
bodily eyes in this mortal state, nor the eyes of our 
soul can look upon the divine Being as He is in 
Himself. To be raised to tfie divine condition and 
endowed with the almost divine powers fitting us 
for the Beatific Vision, is the reward of our present 
merits through His grace, who is the Author, 
Repairer, and Perfecter of our nature. 

Listen then to what the Hebrew lawgiver relates 
of the manner in which God fulfilled, in a certain 
measure, the ardent prayer of His servant : 

a And when the Lord was come down in a cloud, 
Moses stood with Him, calling upon the name of the 
Lord. And when He passed before him, he said, 
'O Lord! the Lord God! merciful and gracious, 
patient and of much compassion, and true; who 
keepest mercy unto thousands; who takest away 
iniquity, and wickedness, and sin; and no man of 
himself is innocent before Thee.' . . . And 
Moses, making haste, bowed down prostrate upon 
the earth, and adoring." * 

* Exodus, xxxiv, 5-8. 



24 KOVISSIMA. 

OUR EMMANUEL- 

Aye, we can only look upon the Sun of Right- 
eousness, as through a cloud, with these bodily and 
unhallowed eyes of ours. We may feel that He is 
near us j that He comes as He did in the Tabernacle 
of Moses, or in the Temple of Solomon, veiled in a 
cloud to dwell with us and be our Emmanuel. He 
is " God with us," our Helper, our Healer, merciful, 
patient, compassionate of our sufferings and misery, 
taking away iniquity and sin; true to us in His 
promises, and true in His teachings, our faithful and 
infallible Guide. 

All this He is while "walking with us in the 
way," and abiding as our Guest in our tabernacles. 
But what shall it be, when the journey is over, and 
He takes us to Himself, to be where He is, with 
Himself inseparably and eternally? 

FORESHADOWING. 

This is the sweet mystery of the life to come, the 
shoreless ocean of light, of truth supernal, of 
heavenly bliss, whose abysses we have to explore in 
these chapters — as a son and heir after long wander- 
ing from the glorious patrimony and the splendid 
halls of his ancestors is allowed by night to enter 
stealthily, and to be led by some devoted old servant 
through every portion of the noble mansion which 
is one day to be his own. He can only pass through 
rapidly, fearfully; for he is but the unreconciled, 
unacknowledged prodigal ; while outside the regal 
home all is shrouded in the darkness of night. 

Even so may we in spirit, guided by the light of 
the divine oracles, and directed by the teaching of the 
Church, soar above those heights, descend into those 



NOVISSIMA. 25 

depths, wnere all is so radiant with the divinest hope, 
so well defined in every detail by the Spirit of God. 
But, in studying what light and what warmth the 
near Presence of God in the Old Law shed upon 
His people, upon His chosen servants, and those 
who sought Him with their whole heart, we are led 
necessarily to the very feet of the Incarnate God in 
the New Law, to that Home in Nazareth, where He 
abode as the Carpenter's Son during thirty years of 
His life among us. 

THE WORK OUR EMMANUEL DID AMONG US. 

Surely, the Only-Begotten Son, in coming down 
among us, came also " in a cloud;" and while He 
dwelt among us, He busied Himself in taking away 
iniquity and sin. The saintly precursor, whose 
light was only the forerunner of our Day-Star, said 
of Him, as he pointed Him out to the multitudes at 
the Jordan : " Behold the Lamb of God, who 
taketh away the sins of the world ! " 

Not merely did He busy Himself with paying the 
ransom of our sins, and expiating our guilt, but He, 
the merciful, the compassionate, and the true, ap- 
plied Himself to repairing the consequences of sin. 
More than that. He sought to banish from our 
hearts and our lives the fruitful causes of sin — 
pride, vanity, sensuality, the lust of pleasure, and 
the lust of gold. He sought to kindle in our souls 
the fire of divinest generosity, by filling them with 
the supernatural love of His Father and Himself, 
as well as with the love of the human brotherhood 
as the inseparable fruit of the love of the Father. 
His grace — that is, the influence of His teaching and 
example, aided by special inspirations enlightening 



26 NOVISSIMA. 

our mind and a corresponding impulse to the heart — 
tends to make us practice toward God and our 
brethren the humility which He practiced by em- 
bracing ignominy, shame, and suffering, in order to 
glorify God and save the world. 

He lived among us in obscurity, poverty, toil and 
persecution, and died crowned with thorns and 
nailed to a cross between malefactors, that we might 
learn the secret of His hidden wisdom, which 
chooses the w T eakest instruments to accomplish the 
mightiest purposes; vanquishes sin, death and hell 
by the shame of the cross; lifts man to heaven, 
and enables him to sanctify and lift up the world 
with himself by self-denial and self-sacrifice. 

THE VIRTUE THAT WENT OUT OF HIM. 

See how all who were nearest and dearest to our 
Emmanuel learned this lesson of a wisdom all 
hidden and divine, from the influence of His grace, 
the reading of His life, the light which escaped from 
within the cloud, and the secret fire which the near- 
ness of that mighty Heart kindled in theirs. Of 
Joseph's death we know nothing from the Gospels. 
But we may guess the rest, from the generosity dis- 
played, at the divine command, in silencing his own 
scruples, * in flying into exile at a moment's warn- 
ing with Mother and Babe, in abiding there amid 
dangers, poverty, and obscurity till warned to return, 
and then returning forthwith to face new clangers, 
new persecutions, hardship and obloquy, in fulfill- 
ment of the divine trust. Such a man showed that 
the Holy Ghost had taught him to " esteem the 

* St. Matthew, i, 19-24. 



KOVISSIMA. 2? 

reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasure 
of the Egyptians." * 

He, had he been among the living, would have 
stood with the Blessed Mother and St. John be- 
neath the wood which bore our Ransom, as His 
shame and suffering paid the price of all our pride 
and sensuality. But by following Him to the cross 
she, as well as the holy women who had been in 
Galilee the companions of her ministrations to 
Christ, showed how they had "learned Christ." 
So did John; and so, in a different measure, did 
presently the other Apostles and Disciples. Who 
could enable men to "learn Christ, and Christ Cru- 
cified," but the Spirit of Christ? 

After the Ascension that Spirit will be poured 
down on Apostles and Disciples, and divine gener- 
osity, manifesting itself in self-denial and self-sacri- 
fice, in glorying in the cross, and in being crucified 
for the love and the name of Christ, will be like 
the rush of inundating waters, flooding the whole 
earth. 

Such was the first result of Christ's stay upon 
earth; such fruits followed the first hidden hus- 
bandry of our Emmanuel, working silently, obscurely 
upon the minds, the hearts, the lives of men and 
women around them at Nazareth, at Bethlehem, in 
Jerusalem, in Samaria, among the "hundred towns 
of Galilee," and even in Egypt, where the stay of 
the divine Babe, like the central heat of the earth, 
when winter has passed with her thick overlying 
snows, covers hill and plain with verdure and bloom, 
burst later into the glories of Alexandria and the 
Thebaid. 

* Hebrews, xi, 26. 



28 XOVISSIMA. 

To Joseph and Mary; to Elizabeth and Zachary; 
to John the Baptist; to holy Simeon and Anna; to 
the shepherds of Bethlehem, as they worshiped at 
His crib; to the Apostles attracted to His Person by 
the spell of a hidden magnetism, as to the multi- 
tudes who flocked to hear Him around Genesareth, 
and followed Him across the lake and into the wil- 
derness; to the crowds of the afflicted, the suffering, 
the sick, and the maimed, " a virtue went out of Him," 
healing, creating anew, enlightening the mind, puri- 
fying the heart and firing it, exalting and sanctifying 
the whole nature of man. The unborn babe felt 
that virtue as the hidden God was borne across his 
parent's threshold. The mothers of both precursor 
and Redeemer are filled with His Spirit, and pour 
forth their soul in adoration, praise and prophecy, 
when their Emmanuel brings them for the first time 
together. 

THE CLOUD LIFTED A MOMENT MAKES EAETH 
HE A VEX. 

When, on the Mount of Transfiguration, He 
allows some of the hidden glory to shine forth and 
irradiate the body about to be spit upon, scourged, 
and crucified, as the hill-top on which He thus 
appeared was suddenly changed into heaven, Peter, 
in the name of his two companions, could only 
exclaim in the excess of his rapture : " Lord, it is 
good to be here ! " And he would fain have pitched 
his tent and fixed his abode forever amid these 
splendors and the intoxicating spiritual delights of 
this new Presence. 

It was a foretaste of heaven, so to be with Christ. 



NOVISSIMA. -29 

But, oh, the difference between the glory and 
delight of Tabor and the clear vision and bliss of 
Paradise ! 

Only that once did our Emmanuel treat those 
who were to promulgate His law to the nations and 
be His witnesses to the ends of the earth as He 
had treated Moses in the passage quoted above. 
Moses and Elias were both there to bear their testi- 
mony to His divinity. Thus did the Old Testament 
affirm the divinity of the New — the Law and the 
Prophets point to Christ as the fulfillment of all. 
Moses could only gaze upon the cloud which con- 
cealed the inaccessible brightness of the divine 
Majesty, or, when the Vision had passed from before 
the place Avhere he was hidden in the rock, catch a 
glimpse of the vanishing glory, as one can bear to 
look at the western horizon, on the fiery radiance 
which the just sinking sun leaves upon earth and 
sky. But Moses was privileged in the New Testa- 
ment to look upon the glorified face of Him who 
was very God in the flesh, Him on whose face we 
shall first look in Heaven ere the clear splendors of 
the Beatic Vision burst upon our sight. " In His 
light we shall see the Light" 

WALKING WITH US IX THE WAY. 

The secret but powerful and sweet action of 
our "hidden God and Saviour" on all to whom 
He drew near upon earth is well exemplified in 
what is related by St. Luke of the two Disciples 
journeying toward Emmaus on the day of our 
Lord's Resurrection. 

They were "talking together of all these things 
which had happened. And it came to pass, that 



30 * STOVISSIMA. 

while they talked and reasoned with themselves, 
Jesus Himself also drawing near went with them. 
But their eyes were held that they should not know 
Him." * 

Their minds, their hearts, were full of Him. 
Their faith, as yet, was only in its germinal state, 
like the bud on the fruit tree in early spring, ready 
to burst its enclosure, but fearing the nipping frost. 
He sets about teaching them, laying before them the 
entire scheme of Redemption and enlightening their 
eyes to perceive the necessary completion of the 
divine whole in the Crucifixion and Resurrection of 
Jesus Christ. Our Emmanuel had " walked with 
them" the remainder of the way. The spell of His 
presence and word was on them. They could not 
bear to part with such a Teacher and Comforter. 
"Stay with us, because it is toward evening, and the 
day is now far spent." 

He yields, enters their present abode, seats Him- 
self at their table, "took bread, and blessed and 
brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were 
opened, and they knew Him, and He vanished out 
of their sight. And they said one to the other: 
'Was not our heart burning within us, whilst He 
spoke in the way, and opened to us the Scriptures ? ? 

"And rising up the same hour, they went back to 
Jerusalem; and they found the eleven gathered to- 
gether, and those that were with them, saying : ' The 
Lord is risen, indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.' 
And they (the two Disciples) told what things were 
done in the way; and how they knew Him in the 
breaking of bread. Now, while they were speaking 
these things, Jesus stood in the midst of them, and 
saith to them : 'Peace be to you. It is I. Fear not.' 

*St. Luke, xxiv, H-16. 



NOVISSIMA. 31 

u But they "being troubled and frighted, supposed 
that they saw a spirit. And he said to them: 'Why 
are you troubled, and why do thoughts arise in 
your hearts? See My hands and feet, that it is 
Myself; handle, and see : for a spirit hath not 
flesh and bones, as you see Me to have/ And when 
He said this, He showed them His hands and feet." * 

O Adonai, Emmanuel — Thou sweet Son of the 
Virgin Mary, Thou who condescendest to become 
bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh — how we 
still need that Thou shouldst be what Thou art 
indeed — God very near and dear to us — the God of 
our heart! 

WE KNOW HIM IN "THE BREAKING OF THE 



Even now, when our hearts are troubled "in the 
way," as we journey painfully along amid the pit- 
falls of the road, and the mists and darkness that 
beset our path, how we need that Thou shouldst 
" draw T near and go with us ! " that thou shouldst 
open our minds to understand the things of God and 
His ways ! that Thou shouldst touch our hearts with 
one secret spark of the fire from above ! We need 
that Thou shouldst tarry with us when the shadows 
lengthen on our path " toward evening," and our 
day is far spent." Ah, tarry with us, and let us, 
too, " know Thee in the breaking of Bread." 

O Bread of Life, come down from heaven; how 
many have seen every cloud of doubt vanish as they 
sate at that Table with Thee, where Thou blessest, 
breakest, and givest Thy supersubstantial Bread ; " 
and Thy gift is like fire from heaven laid on their 

* St. Luke, xxiv, 30-40. 



32 KOTISSIMA. 

hearts to warm, to comfort, to strengthen, to inflame ! 

The two Disciples, when they had partaken of 
this Bread, and felt the sensible Presence withdrawn, 
at once followed the prompting of the divine 
charity which filled them. They return to impart 
to the eleven and the Disciples in Jerusalem the 
knowledge of His Resurrection, only to learn from 
them that Simon Peter had seen Him. And then 
they relate their own wonderful experience. But 
while the little band are thus rejoicing and talking 
about Him, lo ! there He is in their midst ! 

Poor human nature! They are all burning with 
the desire to look upon His face; to hear the sounds 
of His loved voice; to fall at the feet so cruelly 
pierced for them on the cross ; to feel the forgiving 
touch of these hands so often raised over themselves 
in blessing! And when He stands before them — 
not dazzling them with the glories of His risen body, 
but, as ever, veiling even the human majesty of His 
person — they think they " see a spirit," and are all 
trouble and fright ! 

Poor human nature ! pitiable alike in its weakness 
and in its presumption ! There are those among us 
who think that they could bear the sight of God's 
own native brightness and majesty, as He sees and 
knows Himself; and that their unaided power of 
intellect could contemplate, grasp and fathom "the 
multitude of His greatness;" measure from end to 
end the Infinite in every line of those manifold per- 
fections, which, by their very nature, exclude all 
limit and measure; and yet they are frightened by 
the mere thought of seeing a poor human disem- 
bodied spirit — a ghost ! 

He has proved Himself to be very God by 
announcing beforehand to these same men that He 



stovissima. 33 

would be put to death shamefully and rise the third 
day by His own divine power. This miracle of 
miracles is now accomplished. They behold Him 
in flesh and blood ; and though Simon has thus seen 
Him and attested the fact to the other Apostles, and 
though the two Disciples who have just spoken 
attest a similar experience, they suppose that the 
risen Christ is only a spirit ! 

But that risen Body which He invites them to 
touch and feel is the pledge and prophecy of their 
own resurrection. The God-Man who, once freed 
from the grave, hastens to show Himself to them, to 
make them touch and feel these yawning wounds in 
hands and feet, is He in the light of whose counte- 
nance we shall see the essence of the Deity without 
cloud or veil in the life to come. 

Then it is we shall understand what it must be to 
be with Christ when the infirmities of our present 
state shall have passed away, when we shall look 
upon His countenance on the throne of His king- 
dom without " trouble or fright/' and when the 
glories of that face divine will prepare us for the 
Beatific Vision. 

The best of us while " on the way," the most 
enlightened in human and divine knowledge, are not 
without uneasiness, doubt, and sinking of the heart 
when we look beyond the horizon of the present 
existence, and endeavor to penetrate beyond the 
dark and deep gulf which death opens beneath our 
feet. We need to take up the divine Book, to medi- 
tate His battle with suffering and agony, to read of 
His arising immortal from the grave, of the love 
which made Him hasten to reveal Himself to His 
own. We feel that it is to reassure us in our half- 



34 NOVISSIMA. 

belief, in our hesitation between His remembered 
promises and the scoffing and skepticism of the anti- 
Christian world, that He stands all of a sudden in 
the midst of the Disciples, with the greeting: 
" Peace be with you. It is I. Fear not ! " 



CHAPTER III 



OF THE WAY 



n. 

TO BE DISSOLVED AND BE WITH CHRIST' 



Dear Friend, far off, my lost desire, 

So far, so near in woe and weal; 

loved the most, when most I feel 
There is a lower and a higher ; 
Known and unknown, human, divine ; 

Sweet human hand and lip and eye ; 

Dear heavenly Friend, that canst not die, 
Mine, mine forever, ever mine ! 

— Tennyson. 

Paul was not, as we know, one of the eleven, or 
one even of the Disciples gathered " for fear of the 
Jews " in the upper chamber on that memorable 
evening of Christ's Resurrection. He was not privi- 
leged to be near the person of our Emmanuel either 
before His crucifixion or before His ascension. He 
was during the first stage of their apostolic preach- 
ing their bitter antagonist, the declared enemy of 
Christ. 

And then came the miracle of his conversion — 
that extraordinary scene on the road to Damascus, 



NOVISSIMA. 35 

when the Crucified appeared to him, when the light 
from His glorified countenance flashed upon the per- 
secutor, overthrew him as with the suddenness of a 
thunderbolt, blinded him while opening up to the 
truth the eyes of his soul, and changed Saul into a 
chosen vessel of apostolic zeal. 

TRANSFORMED BY MEETING CHRIST ON THE AVAY. 

How utterly the convert gave himself up to the 
Master as an instrument to be used by the divine 
Hand for any and every purpose we also know. 
The blood of Stephen, which he had shed by the 
hands of others, was like a voice crying out from 
the ground whithersoever he turned, urging him to 
superhuman toils in the service of the cause he had 
once blasphemed. He had heard Stephen's dying 
words : " Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the 
Son of Man standing on the right hand of God." * 

It became Saul's privilege while yet in the flesh, 
and in the very midst of his apostolic labors, to be 
carried by the Spirit of God up to the very portals 
of that heavenly kingdom, to look upon its splen- 
dors, and hear the language of its inhabitants. 
Kestored to earth and its labors, the Apostle ran his 
race as if his were the fire and strength and 
eloquence of a seraph. 

THE SERAPHIC FIRE OF THE APOSTLE. 

In his later epistles his love for our Lord, and for 
the Father who in Christ gave us all things desir- 
able for time and eternity, is like a fire which has 
long been secretly growing, growing till the flames 
burst forth into a mighty conflagration. The super- 

*Acts, vii, 55. 



36 N0VISSI3IA. 

natural fire glows and burns in every page and line. 
When he speaks of that mystery of charity by which 
the Eternal Wisdom and Goodness planned our cre- 
ation and redemption, our sanctification here below 
and deification in the life to come, the great Apostle 
is beside himself. The vision of this loving and 
fatherly Providence, compelling all' things to con- 
spire towards our good, overwhelms this ardent soul. 
His language is full of breaks and reticences, as if 
hand and pen could not keep up with the torrent of 
thought and feeling. Read the first chapter of the 
Epistle to the Ephesians to have some idea of the 
mighty forces which seemed to lift this Elias of the 
New Testament above the earth, and to be contin- 
ually carrying him heavenward, as in a vehicle of 
flame. 

oh! the uxseaechable eiches of cheist. 

"To me," he says, "the least of all the Saints, is 
given this grace to preach among the Gentiles the 
unsearchable riches of Christ, and to enlighten all 
men, that they may see what is the dispensation of 
the mystery which hath been hidden from eternity 
in God, who created all things ; that the manifold 
wisdom of God may be made known to the princi- 
palities and powers in the heavenly places through 
the Church, according to the eternal purpose which 
He made in Christ Jesus our Lord — in whom we 
have boldness and access with confidence by the 
faith of Him. 

" Wherefore, I pray you not to faint at my tribu- 
lations for you, which is your glory. For this cause 
I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, of whom all paternity in heaven and earth 



KOVISSIMA. 37 

is named, that He would grant you, according to 
the riches of His glory, to be strengthened by His 
Spirit with might unto the inward man ; that Christ 
may dwell by faith in your hearts; that, being rooted 
and founded in charity, you may be able to compre- 
hend, with all the Saints, what is the breadth, and 
length, and height, and depth. ... To know 
also the charity of Christ, which surpasseth all 
knowledge, that you may be filled unto all the 
fullness of God." * 

WAITING AT THE GATES. 

All this was written from his prison in Rome, 
with the near prospect of a martyr's death before his 
eyes. The same sentiments, the same exultant love 
for Christ, and overflowing tenderness for the spirit- 
ual children left behind in Greece, Macedonia and 
Asia Minor, are manifest in the Epistle to the 
Philippians, written at the same time and from the 
same prison. He yearns for that heavenly compan- 
ionship with the Master, of which he had been 
vouchsafed a foretaste; he, too, would be at rest 
with that glorious company of the heavenly Jeru- 
salem. But the ravening wolves were abroad among 
the flock he had gathered to Christ, and how could 
he forsake them in their danger, even with the pros- 
pect of the near felicity ? " For to me, to live is 
Christ : and to die is gain. . . . I am strait- 
ened between two ; having a desire to be dissolved and 
to be with Christ, a thing by far the better." f 

The yearning to be plunged into that abyss of 
brightness, of which he had only had a glimpse at 
the gates of Paradise ; the desire to be forever at 
rest at the feet of the Master on whose face he had 



: Ephesians, iii, 8-19. f Philippians, i, 21-23, 



38 NOVISSMA. 

looked, half-blinded by the glory; the attraction 
toward that blissful company of angels and Saints, 
who had hailed him in advance as one of their own ; 
such were his preoccupations: how could he help 
preferring "to be dissolved, and to be with Christ?"-* 

"seek the things that are above." 

" If you be risen with Christ," he writes at the 
same time to the Christians of Colossac, " seek the 
things that are above, where Christ is sitting at the 
right hand of God : mind the things that are above, 
not the things that are upon the earth. For you are 
dead; and } r our life is hid with Christ in God." * 

WHAT "DISSOLUTION" MEANS FOE THE CHRISTIAN. 

We are, therefore, brought in spirit to consider, 
with infinite reverence and awe, what it is "to be 
dissolved and to be with Christ ; " and thus to be 
" able to comprehend, with all the Saints, what is the 
breadth and length, and height and depth," of the 
glory and felicity which this everlasting companion- 
ship bestows. 

" To be dissolved," to be separated temporarily 
from this body, from the manifold ties which bind 
even the lowliest to this present life and its associa- 
tions, has no terrors for the soul who has lived, 
labored, and suifered for Christ, for whom God's 
will, in life and in death, has been the supreme law 
of love and duty. The perfect charity which makes 
the true Christian look up to the divine honor and 
glory as the aim of every deed and aspiration, to the 
divine pleasure as the source of every satisfaction 
and enjoyment, is only the preparation for that 

* Colossians, iii, 1-3. 



NOVISSTMA. 39 

better, that perfect state, in which God is to fulfill to 
the utmost the purest aspirations, the holiest desires, 
of His faithful servant's will. 

Death, then — the " dissolution " which fills the 
sinful, the worldly, the slave to self-will, with uncon- 
trollable fear and agony — is bereft of all terrors for 
such as die in perfect charity with Christ ; a charity 
which also implies the supernatural love of all man- 
kind, and the ardent wish to satisfy all the claims of 
divine and human justice. 

To the mind's eye of him who writes this page a 
twofold instance of this heaven-sent charity is now 
vividly present — the one taken from the lowliest 
walks of life, the other from the very highest. 

HOW THE POOR OF CHRIST DIE. 

It is July in Canada, in the memorable year 1847. 
We are at the Quarantine Station, some thirty miles 
below Quebec. On a little island (" Grosse Isle "), 
midway in the St. Lawrence, where it turns seaward 
and broadens out into the dimensions of a lake 
beneath the capes of the northern mountains, are 
several thousands of the fever-stricken exiles of Ire- 
land, who have vainly fled from famine in their own 
native country, or been improvidently and cruelly 
heaped by the poor-house authorities in yonder emi- 
grant ships. Of these, between twenty and thirty 
are riding at anchor on the fiery bosom of the broad 
brackish stream, with many thousands more of the 
dying, the sick, the famishing, and the vainly ex- 
pectant, strong of limb and stout of heart. There is 
not hospital accommodation on the barren, unin- 
habited island for one-fifth of the diseased multi- 
tude. There is not a single spring of fresh and 



40 xovissnrA. 

wholesome water there for the fevered wretches, 
who roam about among the rocks, with the ther- 
mometer above 90 °, in quest of a cool, refreshing 
draught. 

After a long day's labor, on ship and shore, the 
three priests who had come, in their turn, to minis- 
ter to the sick and dying, had lain down for a few 
hours of needed repose, when the sound of voices 
beneath our window awakened one, at least, of the 
the three — the only one whom these poor exiles 
could claim for their countryman. Our servant was 
warmly expostulating with a woman ^ho was as 
warmly pleading to see " the priest." 

" Sure, I know it's half-dead they must be, the 
darlin' gintlemin, every one of thim. But my poor 
boy is tuk very sudden intirely, and he won't give 
me any pace till I bring him the priest. An' it's 
meself is not much better, God help me, with the 
faver, and the thurst, and the grief that is breaking 
my heart. For I have buried three of thim since 
we left Cork. And he is the only wan I have now; 
glory be to God." 

And the voice sank into a low and pitiful wail. 
By this time the clergyman had come out into the 
sultry midnight air; and at his sight the poor 
mother poured forth a hymn of thanksgiving to God 
in that fervent, figurative, and eloquent language 
which wells so naturally from Irish lips up from the 
warm depths of the Irish heart. The woman was 
scarcely able to stand. The servant, who was him- 
self a devotod man, and had come to the place from 
no mercenary motive, brought her out a refreshing 
and invigorating draught, together with some whole- 
some food wrapped in a paper. 



XOVISSIMA. 41 

She summoned all her remaining strength to 
guide the missionary to where she had left her dying 
son, still venting her gratitude in bursts of fervent 
thanksgiving to God and His minister. Happily, 
some of the hospital nurses who had directed the 
poor creature to the priest's house, met us as we 
blundered forward in the darkness, and half-sup- 
ported, half-carried her to where her son was. He 
had found no place in tent or hospital when landed 
with his mother on the island during the afternoon, 
and, like hundreds of others, had dragged himself 
down to the beach, hoping to slake his intense thirst 
in the brackish waters. He had drunk copiously of 
them, and they had fearfully increased both the 
dysentery, from which he was suffering, and the 
malignant ship-fever, which had only half-declared 
itself at his landing. 

Some of their fellow-immigrants, compassionating 
both mother and son, had found them a shady nook 
among the rocks, and beneath the shelter of some 
scrubby, overhanging firs. There, lying on a bundle 
of clothes, or bedding — the only remnant saved by 
the poor widow from the wreck of her home — lay a 
youth of twenty summers, a Tipperary boy, and no 
unworthy specimen of a noble race of men. The 
priest lost no time in doing his holy work with the 
dying man; for dying he was, with such fearful 
suddenness and rapidity did the malignant fever, 
complicated as it was with dysentery, the heat of the 
climate, and the absence of all proper dietary and 
medical treatment, carry off its victims. The boy 
was already half-delirious. But a draught from the 
cool and stimulating beverage brought by the clergy- 
man restored the sufferer to momentary conscious- 



42 Kovissima. 

ness and vigor. He had been well brought up by 
parents who had known better fortunes ; and all the 
piety of a pure soul and a generous nature burst 
forth at the sight of the priest and the near prospect 
of death. His only care in dying was about his 
poor, lonely, widowed mother. But when the priest 
promised him that she should not be friendless, all 
his thoughts were for God. 

" I have seen so many die on ship-board, your 
Reverence/ 7 he said, " without priest or Sacraments, 
that I bless God from the bottom of my heart for 
having sent you to me." He had been to confession 
and Communion, as well as his mother, before setting 
sail. They had lived ever since in the near presence 
of death, of God, and of judgment, keeping their 
souls from sin. In the Viaticum given that night 
beneath the stars, with the tide-water of the great 
river beating on the rocks near at hand, and the 
guardian-angels of the Irish race kneeling invisibly 
around, He who was born in a cave by the wayside, 
and laid on the straw of a poor cold crib, came to be, 
to the young exile from far-away Tipperary, the 
pledge of the eternal possession. 

Oh, never did the divine Sacraments and consola- 
tions of the Christian faith appear more sublime or 
more comforting than amid all the horrors and deso- 
lation of Grosse Isle ! 

going home! 

" Sure, God has been good to us, acushla ma 
chree," she said, as she sate her down by her boy's 
side, when the last rite was ended, and the last 
blessing given, and had taken the weary, aching head 
on her lap. "Sure 'tis Himself has come for you, 



KovissimA. 43 

asthore, to take you to Himself. It's in His own 
blessed heaven you'll soon be, avourneen ; and I'll 
not be long behind, plase God. For it's tired I am 
of this world, an' I'm longin' to be with God, an' 
with your father and the childher." 

And she fondly kissed the face turned up to her 
in the faint light of our lantern. 

The missionary, on his return to his cottage, sent 
back with one of the sick-nurses a warm shawl to 
protect the widow and her son from the heavy night 
dew, and some cooling drink for them. The next 
morning, as soon as he could, he hastened to the 
spot where he had left them, resolved to find them 
as speedily as possible a shelter from the burning 
sun. The boy was already dead, and some of the 
other able-bodied immigrants were with the discon- 
solate mother, offering whatever comfort and aid 
they could in their utter helplessness. She still sat 
with her back against the rock, as we had left her 
some six or seven hours previously, supporting the 
head of her son on her lap, and talking to him in a 
low, sweet voice, as if she beheld him in the better 
world. 

When she became aware of the priest's presence, 
she looked up at him with hollow, tearless eyes, but 
with a rapt expression, and a countenance that 
seemed touched with a light from beyond the grave. 

"Ah, then, ye're welcome, your Reverence," she 
said. " He's at home now, thank God. 
Yes, asthore ma chree, it's at home you are at last; 
and the priest's blessing was on you when you were 
near the end," she went on, looking down fondly on 
the calm young face of him who seemed to sleep so 
sweetly on the maternal bosom* 



44 HOVISSIMA. 

(i Och, then, it's better for you to be with God, 
alanna, than to be thryin' to build up a cabin for the 
ould mother among strangers, far away from your 
own and from blessed Ireland. God '11 soon bring 
me to where you're all gone before me." And, as 
she spoke, the words fell from her lips one by one, 
wearily, almost inaudibly at the last. 

The missionary, deeply moved, and trying to steel 
himself against emotions, which took away much of 
the strength he needed, spoke to the bereaved mother 
as tenderly as he could. But she heard him not. 
She had fainted. When she recovered consciousness, 
it was evident that the strength of maternal love, 
which had till then kept her up, was giving way to 
the terrible fever. The change from ship-board to 
the open air, and the fever-laden atmosphere of the 
island, with a day and night of exposure, had fear- 
fully developed the germs of the disease in her 
system. 

The missionary had her carried to the little chapel 
near his cottage ; it had been changed into an hospi- 
tal. He managed — the interior being already filled — 
to place a cot for the now delirious and unconscious 
mother on the shady side of the chapel, where kind 
hands would minister to her. 

Why delay the reader ? Before sunset that even- 
ing the dead body of her tall, handsome son was laid 
with those of more than a hundred other victims in 
one common grave, and the Church's Requiem, the 
sublime and beautiful prayers for eternal rest and 
the surpassing peace of that other world, w^as said 
above these remains with such a feeling of holy ex- 
ultation as the priests in the catacombs laid to rest 
the bodies of the early martyrs. For he who writes 



NovissimA. 45 

these words attests before heaven and earth that the 
sufferers to whom he ministered on that island 
appeared to him confessors and martyrs of the faith, 
men and women whose supreme care was to keep 
their souls from sin in the perpetual expectation of 
death and judgment. 

A day or two afterward, the poor widow from 
Tipperary breathed her last. In her own beautiful 
and most truthful language, she " went home " — to 
that home where every holy thought and aim, every 
holy word and deed, every pang of body and spirit 
borne for His love, who remembers all, has its 
unspeakably great reward. " Let my soul die the 
death of the just, and my last end be like to 
them ! " * 



SPAIN'S MO ST GLORIOUS SON. 



HOW CHRISTIAN KINGS DIE. 

We have seen how, among a deeply-religious 
people, death is considered only to be the end of the 
road that leads to the everlasting home, the close of 
our earthly pilgrimage, the secure rest provided after 
faithful labor and long waiting at the feet, in the 
bosom, and in the house of our Father and Creator. 
The very expression, "going home," and the simple, 
heaven-sent faith underlying it, are familiar senti- 
ments and language among a whole people long 
and much tried for their religion, and to whom 
that religion, with its promises, was the treasure 
supremely cherished. 

* Numbers, xxiii, 10. 



46 xovissima. 

We have now to see how Christian kings know 
how to die the death of the Saints after having led a 
heroic and blameless life. 

In the Alcazar of Seville, the most beautiful relic 
of the domestic architecture of the Moors left in 
Spain after the Alhambra of Granada, the royal offi- 
cers in charge of the palace will show you through a 
succession of splendid courts and apartments, as well 
in the modern portion dating from the time of Ferdi- 
nand and Isabella as the more ancient mediaeval 
portion repaired and rebuilt by Pedro I. (surnamed, 
wrongly, the Cruel). We were not insensible to the 
exquisite artistic beauties abounding everywhere, 
nor ignorant of the legends — authentic and other- 
wise — attaching to these glittering marble courts 
and the historic apartments. For we had studied in 
Seville itself the history of its kings and its palaces. 
But the guides only related to ns the story of Don 
Pedro's terrible revenge or justice, or the anecdotes 
connecting Christopher Columbus with the modern 
portions of the pile. We remembered that the 
Alcazar had been the last dwelling place of the con- 
queror of Seville, St. Ferdinand, of Castile, and 
Leon, the twin-soul of his cousin, St. Louis, King of 
France, and one of the truest men and greatest 
Christians of all time. 

We told the chief guide that the memory of 
St. Ferdinand was dearer far to us than the misdeeds 
of the Arabs and Moors who had preceded him in 
Seville, than the crimes — imputed or real — of the 
degenerate descendants of the warrior-saint. We 
besought him to show us the apartments occupied by 
St. Ferdinand. Touched to the heart, evidently by 
our unusual demand, and the earnestness with which 



NOVISSIMA. 47 

we urged it, he at once led us to the rooms which 
the traditions of the place point out as those occu- 
pied by Ferdinand. "This/ 7 the man said, "was his 
bed-chamber, and here he received the last Sacra- 
ments and died." We had already been privileged 
to kneel at his tomb in the neighboring cathedral, 
and to look leisurely on that face which corruption 
has not touched. We now knelt reverently on the 
spot where he breathed his last, lying in sackcloth 
and ashes on the marble floor. The reverence thus 
paid to the memory of those who have been Christ- 
like in life and death, is homage paid to Christ Him- 
self, who " is wonderful in His Saints." 

In the career of St. Ferdinand — from his boyhood 
so tenderly watched over and trained to all moral 
goodness and greatness by his heroic mother; from 
his early manhood, when she resigned in his favor, 
and placed on his head her own crown of Castile; 
all through his great undertakings and achievements 
for the redemption of Spain from the Moslem, and 
his fatherly enactments for the happiness of his 
people, to the conquest of Cordova, and Jaen, and 
Seville — there is enough of the real romance of war 
and chivalry, enough of the loftiest heroism in the 
deeds of the saintly king and his followers to 
furnish the matter of a dozen epic poems. The 
siege and fall of Seville alone surpasses in varied 
incident, and real grandeur of spirit and exploit, 
anything found in Homer or Virgil. 

Ferdinand, sick almost to death from the begin- 
ning to the end of this successful crusade against 
the Moors, was still the light and life of the enter- 
prise ; the wise and skillful commander of a great, 
proud and mixed host ; the ever-watchful and provi- 



48 NOVISSIMA. 

dent ruler of his own kingdoms. In all, his army 
and his people knew him to be not only wise in 
council, indefatigable, skillful, un conquered in the 
field, but the unwearied man of prayer in his own 
privacy — the man of God in all tilings. 

Humane to the Mohammedans in their defeat, he 
respected their every right, save that of retaining 
possession of Spanish soil. Everything that a vic- 
torious prince could do to protect their property and 
persons, and to facilitate their passage to Africa or 
the neighboring Moslem States, St. Ferdinand did. 
For the peopling of the recovered principalities, and 
the regulation of their temporal and religious con- 
cerns, he took every measure that conscience and 
wisdom suggested. 

So intent w r as he on securing the success of this 
mighty undertaking, that he refused to leave his post 
of command to comfort his dying mother, whom he 
had so many reasons for revering and worshiping as 
he did. When Seville fell, the progress of the terri- 
ble disease which preyed upon him did not prevent 
him for a single day from pushing his conquests 
further, and securing them against all enemies, and 
from discharging every duty of the sovereign, the 
legislator, the Christian, and the man. 

ISTo king, all through the Christian ages, ever 
beheld around him so many heroic knights and 
soldiers ; so many men then and now reverenced as 
saints, as stood around Ferdinand III, of Castile, 
and Leon, on the day they returned thanks to the 
God of victories in the magnificent mosque of 
Seville, just consecrated as a Christian temple. 

And when Seville heard that her saintly king 
was near his death, never was death-bed surrounded 



NOVISSIMA. 49 

by a throng as illustrious, or marked by more touch- 
ing circumstances— save only that of St. Louis, some 
years later, on the burning, plague-stricken shores of 
Northern Africa. 

When they told Ferdinand that his last day had 
come, the man whose life had been one long act of 
devotion to the divine glory, and self-sacrifice to the 
good of Spain and her people, only trembled lest he 
had left unfulfilled any one of the many duties 
attached to his high station and responsible office. 
From his constant intercourse with God in prayer, 
and the light which purity of heart and life had 
drawn on his soul, he only derived a deeper sense of 
humility; of the distance which separates the creat- 
ure from the Creator; the poor earthly servant from 
the infinite majesty of the heavenly Master; the 
sinner, conscious only of his failings, shortcomings, 
and guilt, from the most holy Judge and Rewarder 
of all human actions. 

Eternity, with its unspeakable grandeur, its glory, 
and its bliss, seemed to the dying king, as the last 
waves of life brought him to the shore of God's 
empire, so far above all human merits, so out of 
proportion with our nature and our utmost needs 
and aspirations, that the thought of his own little- 
ness, unworthiness, sinfulness, overwhelmed him. 
He commanded that they should clothe his tortured 
frame in sackcloth, and, with a cord round his neck, 
as one deserving of the worst punishment, to be laid 
prostrate on the ashes strewn on the floor. With his 
queen, his sons, nobles, his prelates, and followers 
in battle, around him, he confessed himself a 
sinner, deserving only of the divine wrath, and then 
poured out his soul in appeals for mercy, and tender 



50 STOVISSIMA. 

protestations of his love for God, and his absolute 
submission to the divine Will. 

While princes, prelates, nobles and warriors knelt 
and wept aloud — they who knew what a beautiful, a 
spotless, a glorious life was thus ending — they minis- 
tered to the king the last Sacraments and consola- 
tions of religion. The entire city, the whole of 
Christian Spain, watched, wept, prayed around that 
death-bed, around that palace. 

To every one of the sublime and touching prayers 
of the Church, appointed to be said around the death- 
bed of the Christian, the warrior-king answered in 
a firm voice with the assistants — with a firmer voice, 
indeed ; for the strongest there were moved beyond 
all power of self-control. 

It was as if beyond the veil, the hosts of angels 
and Saints appeared with the Judge Himself, so 
earnestly did each supplication ascend for the soul 
just arrived on the confines of the world unseen. 

"All ye holy Angels and Archangels! 
Pray for him ! 

"0, ye entire Choir of the Just, 
Pray for him ! 

''All ye Patriarchs and Prophets, 
All ye Apostles and Evangelists, 
All ye Disciples of the Lord, 
All ye Innocents and Martyrs, 
Pray for him ! 

" We sinners, God ! beseech Thee to hear us ! 
That Thou do show him mercy, 

We beseech Thee to hear us I ." 

And then the startling injunction uttered by the 
Church, the Mother here below of Christ's children : 

" Go forth from this world, Christian soul, in the name of 
God, the Father Almighty, who created thee ; 



NOVISSIMA. 51 

"In the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, 
who suffered for thee ; 

"In the name of the Holy Ghost, who was poured forth 
upon thee 

"May thy place this day be in the everlasting peace; 

"And thy dwelling in the Holy Sion ! 

"May Christ deliver thee from all pain, who did Himself 
endure the. cross for thee! 

"May Christ deliver thee from the eternal death, who did 
Himself die for thee ! 

"May Christ, the Son of the living God, bring thee to the 
ever-green fields of His Paradise ; 

' ' May that true Shepherd acknowledge thee there as one of 
His own flock ; 

' ' May He absolve thee from all thy sins, and give thee a 
place at His right hand among His own elect. 

" May'st thou see thy Redeemer face to face, and, being ever 
by His side, mayest thou, with blissful eyes, contemplate the 
truth in its clearness. 

"And thus, having become a member of the countless hosts 
of the blessed, mayest thou enjoy for ever and ever the sweet- 
ness of beholding the Godhead ! ' ' 

So, at the gates of heaven, did the companions 
in arms of one who had ail his life battled in the 
cause of Christ, plead to the Most Holy and Most 
Just for the departing soul of a Saint ! 

So mighty is the empire into which we pass 
through the vale of the shadow of death! So per- 
fect is the purity without which none find entrance 
there ! So great is the glory, so unspeakable the 
bliss, so vast and shining the hosts of blessed 
angels and blessed men reigning there with Christ! 

And so, with the deepest humility, and the most 
loving trust in the God of his salvation, passed from 
this world the spirit of Ferdinand, of Castile, amid 
the tears and prayers of a nation, praised, blessed, 
and mourned by all Christendom. 

Is he higher in heaven than the gentle, suffering, 
faithful and pure-minded mother whose death we 



52 NOVISSIMA. 

related above? It were vain and presumptuous to 
inquire. Both are with Christ in God, inseparably, 
eternally. 

What destiny can be compared to theirs ? 

Let us follow them in spirit beyond the Veil, and 
fathom leisurely the meaning of this great comfort- 
ing truth — that God is the reward of the children 
of God. 



CHAPTER IV. 



WITH CHRIST. 



AT THE FOUNT OF LIFE THE KEALIZATION. 

Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, 

Lead Thou me on ! 
The night. is dark, and I am far from home ! 

Lead Thou me on ! 
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see 
The distant scene — one step enough for me. 

— Cardinal Newman. 

THE TWOFOLD KNOWLEDGE CONSTITUTING ETEENAL 
LIFE. 

We can never meditate sufficiently the discourses 
and passing words of Him who, before the Incarna- 
tion, was "the true Light which enhghteneth every 
man that cometh into this world;"* and who, by 
His Incarnation, acquired, as it were, a new right to 
enlighten us, warm our souls into Godlike gener- 
osity, and lift our lives up to a divine level in all 
things. 

*St. John, i, 8. 



KOVISSIMA. 53 

St. John, His own near kinsman according to the 
flesh, and the Disciple favored by His especial friend- 
ship, tells us in the same text * that " in Him [that 
is, in the divine Word from all eternity] was life, 
and the life was the light of men." At the end of 
His earthly labors, this heavenly Guide gave us, in 
His very last discourse, one truth among many, 
which discloses to us, when seriously pondered, un- 
derstood, and taken to heart, the whole secret of 
heavenly bliss : 

"This is eternal life: that they may know Thee, 
the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou 
hast sent." f 

His passion was just about to begin, and every 
sentence and word here recorded of Him bears the 
stamp of a peculiar solemnity. There was a great 
fitness that He should forearm His Disciples — and 
through them forearm us — for the terrible struggle 
which the world wages against Christian truth and 
the Christian life. He, therefore, endeavors to fix 
their minds and hearts on the contemplation of the 
sublime end set before them. For nothing is so 
powerful to fire the souls of men, and animate them 
to the performance of the most heroic deeds, as 
the clear knowledge of a noble, a lofty, a most bene- 
ficial end to be reached. 

Hence it is that He sets before them clearly the 
one great purpose for which He had become Man, 
and for which He was now going to endure a shame- 
ful death : 

" This is life eternal : that they may know Thee, 
the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou 
hast sent." 

* St. John, i, L t Ibidem, xvii, 3. 



54 XOYISSniA. 

This is the life which they must win for them- 
selves by labors and a sacrifice like His own ; this is 
the life for the attainment of which they must teach 
the whole human race to labor and to suffer, sacri- 
ficing everything else, if need be, and deeming every 
lass a gain, if only the possession of life eternal be 
secured thereby. 

There is between this divine destiny set before the 
race, and Christ's last sacramental institution, a close 
and nevpr-to-be-forgotten connection. The Paschal 
Supper was followed by that Mystic Banquet in 
which the Eucharistic Bread and "Wine are substi- 
tuted for the sacrificial lamb commemorative of the 
Passover and the redemption from Egyptian slavery. 
But this Bread, by a miracle of almighty love, con- 
tains the Body of the Lamb of God, who taketh 
away the sins of the world ; and the Eucharistic 
Wine is the Blood about to be poured out on the 
cross in atonement of the sins of the entire human 
race. 

EEMIXDEE OF THE PEICE PAID AND THE INHERI- 
TANCE PUECHASED. 

The Oblation of this Bread and Wine is to be to 
the end of time, among all peoples, in every clime, 
the rite recalling the price paid for the life eternal, 
with its infinite treasures of glory and bliss. 

The banquet, in which this Bread is broken and 
this Wine partaken of daily all over the world, is to 
remind the believers in Christ and His promises 
that this supreme and abiding Gift of the God-Man 
to His own, and the divine Reality it contains, are 
the pledge of the eternal possession. It is u the 
mystery of faith " in which the believing soul 



NOVISSIMA. 55 

grasps and holds beneath the sacramental veil Him 
whom we shall see face to face in the other life. 
The Bread here broken to us in God's house and at 
His table is the sign of the union by love and 
charity which binds together the souls of all God's 
true children on earth, and which will bind them 
everlastingly together in heaven. The Wine here 
poured forth is that blood which flows from the 
heart of Christ to the hearts of all His children — 
from the centre to the extremities of Christ's Body 
— warming us all into imitation of our Master, even 
as wine warms the strong man into attempting and 
executing superhuman deeds. 

Thus do the divine institutions and sacraments of 
earth foreshadow the ineffable union and charity of 
heaven, where God is to be all in all. Therefore 
was it that He who is the Author and Finisher of 
our faith, when He had given to His Apostles 
the supreme pledge of His love, commanding and 
empowering them to perpetuate it among men, He 
lifted His voice in prayer to the Father, and with 
lips all aflame with the two-fold charity of the God 
and the Man, declared : " This is eternal life : that 
they may know Thee, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou 
hast sent." 

COMMUNION OF SAINTS ON EAETH AND IN HEAVEN. 

Let us ascend, therefore, from that earthly society 
of God's faithful servants, in which the sacramental 
Presence bequeathed to us as His last testament, is 
still the heart of the entire body, the centre and 
source of spiritual life, the sweet bond of communion 
between the living members; let us ascend to the 
glorious society of the City of God on high, where 



K ?tisstva. 

Christ thrones everlastingly in the midst of His 
redeemed, and of the angelic hosts v.ho are their 
brethren. There it is before its as St. Paul de- 
- it : 

•• You are conie to Mount Sion, and to the city : 
the liviDg God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and : 
company of many thousands of angels, and to the 
Church of the first-born, who are written in the 
heavens, and fcc God the Judge of all, and to the 
spirits of just men made perfect, and to 
Mediator of the New Testament, and to the sprink- 
ling of blood which speaketh better than that 
of Abel. See that you refuse Him not that 
speaketh."* 

Our efi >rts toward understanding the supernatural 
knowledge of the one true God. and of the my 
of His Incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, as fully lisclosc I 
to the human intellect in the life to come, may be 
not unaptly likened to those of an infant who 
attempts fcc seize and hold a large globe of polished 
metal. Ravished at the sight of the splendid 
object, the child would fain possess himself of it; 
but every eager effort of the helpless little hands 
only seems to drive the shining mass farther from 
his reach. 

In this life, and during the imperfection and 
immaturity of our highest powers, >ox mind must 
be satisfied with gazing from afar, and '-through the 
glass darkly/ 1 at that Sun of the invisible heavens, 
wh se face we shall behold one day undazzled, and 
"in whose light we shall see the Light. " 

* Hebrews, adiL 22-25. 



NOVISSIMA. 57 

WHEN WE HAVE THE FIRST GLIMPSE OF CHRIST'S 
FACE. 

Ere Christians departing this life without stain of 
sin are admitted to the joys of Paradise, they have 
to undergo, as the Church teaches, what is termed in 
theology "the particular judgment," as distinguished 
from the universal judgment at the end of time. 
In both the one and the other Christ is the Judge, 
whose sentence decides the eternal destiny of the 
soul. On the place or the other circumstances of 
this particular judgment the Church has not pro- 
nounced. 

Each one of us, therefore, has to come to Him on 
the confines of the two worlds in that brief interval 
which separates time from eternity, the present 
existence from the dread unknown and interminable 
future. 

To His own faithful followers, passing out of the 
shadow of death, is not He, our Jesus, the first light 
that dawns upon the disembodied spirit? Temper- 
ing the radiance of His glory, as He did when He 
appeared in the midst of His own the evening of 
the Resurrection day, the gentle voice of the 
Redeemer will say: "Peace be to you! It is I. 
Fear not ! " 

AT THE END OF THE WAY. 

Oh ! the blissful transition, from the dark and 
fearful shadows of the valley of death to the golden 
shadow of that peace which is the very atmosphere 
surrounding Him who paid our ransom and wrought 
our deliveranee! To the human souls just freed 
from all the snares and doubts of this life, half- 
unable to conceive the suddenness and the greatness 



58 KOyissima. 

of their coming bliss, and in their humility still 
troubled at the remembrance of past guilt, and 
trembling at the thought of the Judge's tremendous 
justice and unapproachable holiness, how aptly are 
the words of Scripture spoken : " Why are you 
troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? 
See My hands and feet, that it is I Myself." * 

Xow we can understand whence comes the light 
of judgment on all who believe in Christ and pro- 
fess to follow Him : " See My hands and feet." 
There, in the wounds of the Crucified, are the shining 
characters in which divine love has written the story 
of its generosity. In their light human love has 
to judge its own return to Jesus Crucified. 

But the scene in the upper chamber was one in 
which half-believing, half-doubting, troubled, and 
frightened men were the chief actors. At the meet- 
ing with the Judge at the very entrance to the land 
of the living, what a different meaning would the 
words of the Gospel have for spirits in whom 
already a mighty transformation has taken place ! 

THE INTRODUCTION TO THE FOUNT OF LIFE. 

To look upon the human face of Christ, to fall at 
His feet and adore them, to feel the blessings which 
descend like streams of creating and elevating; virtue 
from those pierced hands, to know that there, on the 
threshold of heaven, stands greeting us the Redeemer 
and Father of our souls ! What an introduction to 
the everlasting kingdom ! What a foretaste of that 
life, of that knowledge, that ecstatic joy, which are 
to follow on the Beatific Vision — the clear sight of 

*St. Luke, xxiv, 38-39. 



KOVISSIMA. 59 

the essence of God, and the sense of possessing for- 
ever the very Fount of life and Author of all good ! 

So we may believe that the beginning of our 
beatitude in the life to come will be to look upon the 
face of our Saviour, our Model, our Judge, of Him 
who became Man to lift us up to the glory of chil- 
dren of God. In Him we know dwelleth incarnate 
the fullness of the Godhead. So on Him — " the 
first-begotten of the dead/ 7 * "the first-born among 
many brethren "f — these brethren, at their first 
entrance into His kingdom, can rest the eyes of their 
soul, enraptured with the divine beauty and great- 
ness of the Man-God, before being admitted to con- 
template the unveiled glories of the divine Essence 
Itself. 

Who that has tried to study Christ and the things 
of God earnestly while in the flesh, or has centered 
in the hope of that life eternal, spoken of above, all 
his deepest affections and aspirations, but could 
repeat truly, with all the voices of his heart, the 
words of the Parisian Hymn : 

videre Te, amare Te, 
Perenniter laudare Te ! 

"Oh, to see Thee, to love Thee, 
Eternally to praise Thee ! ' ' 

And yet we have not approached, by mounting 
the first step in the mighty ladder of contemplation, 
that Beatific Vision, in which God, seen as He is in 
Himself, is to the blessed soul of man, as He is to the 
angels, as He is to Himself, the very Fount of life, 
the Well-spring of beatitude. 

Here below, while we toil onward through temp- 
tations and pitfalls ; while we try to rise above the 

* Apocalypse, i, 5. t Romans, viii, 29. 



60 KOYISSIMA. 

delusions and fascinations of sense, and keep our 
eyes fixed on Him, who is " the day-spring from on 
high," let us sing in our heart of hearts : 

Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, 

Lead Thou me on ! 
The night is dark, and I am far from liome ! 

Lead Thou me on ! 
Keep Thou my feet ; I do not ask to see 
The distant scene — one step enough for me. 

But when, the pilgrimage over, we are at the gates 
of home, and its light, peace, security, and rest, fall 
on us with the fragrance of the everlasting hills, how 
sweetly He, the Shepherd of the flock, will lead us 
from light to light, from glory to glory, till we reach 
the centre and summit of all the hopes and aspira- 
tions of the human soul — the everlasting possession 
of God, perfectly known and loved as He is known ; 
and with that possession, the added felicity of com- 
panionship with the blessed society of His angels 
and Saints. 

As we pause on the threshold of that home, on the 
frontier of that empire, from which death, sin, suffer- 
ing, fear, and doubt, are excluded by the Almighty 
Will, let us take this thought home to our hearts, 
that there God, in giving us Himself as our reward, 
gives us, with Himself, all that He has that is most 
precious — not merely that material world, His 
master-piece, created to be our home and kingdom, 
but the wealth of friendship, of love, of glory, 
enjoyed in the closest communion of our spirit with 
the spirits of all that is greatest, holiest, best and 
most perfect among angels and men. 

This is a mere naked statement of the mighty fact 
whose manifold realities we are now about to ex- 
plore. 



NOVISSIMA. 61 



THE FOUNT ITSELF. 



God, then, perfectly known, securely and everlast- 
ingly possessed, is that Fount of Life for whose waters 
our souls are athirst. When we shall have arrived 
at some correct, though necessarily dim, conception of 
that God, infinitely great and good, infinitely to be 
admired, and praised, and loved, we shall be able to 
contemplate, with intelligence and rapture, that world 
of holy angels and holy men which forms God's 
crown in the heavens — and these heavens them- 
selves the glorious abode of the King of kings and 
of the countless myriads of His happy subjects. 

Our existence in that future state is to be life, 
true life, personal life, most perfect and most blissful 
life. The close and ineffable union between the soul 
and its Creator, between the supremely true and our 
intellect, between the supremely good, perfect, and 
lovely, and our heart, is to be a union between two 
persons who remain eternally distinct while being 
eternally united by mutual knowledge, esteem, praise 
and love. 

Dear reader, in guiding you upwards along those 
dazzling and giddy heights, I am anxious not to 
advance one step without feeling that we have the 
lamp of Revelation to shed its steady radiance on our 
progress, that we are safely following whither the 
teaching of the Master leads us. 

OUR BLISSFUL LIFE IN GOD NOT ABSORPTION IN GOD. 

Our union with God in the land of the living is, 
therefore, not annihilation, nor absorption in God, 
but the elevation, the perfection, the deification — it is 
not too strong an expression — of the life begun here. 



62 NOYISSIMA. 

Do not weary, then, if I endeavor to account for 
and refute a few errors on this subject, and point out 
in the Old Testament writers the yearnings for this 
union with God, this clear sight of His Being, this 
secure possession of the Infinite Good. Some people 
are endeavoring, at the close of this nineteenth 
century of Christian civilization, to transplant hither 
the monstrous dogmas of Asiatic pantheism. Just 
compare their absurdity with the Gospel truth. 

THE HEAVEX OF PANTHEISM AXD THE CHRISTIAN 
HEAVEN. 

The religions of India and the far East hold out to 
their hundreds of millions of followers the prospect 
of annihilation after death, or of the absorption of 
man's being into the Divinity, as the highest bliss to 
which human nature can aspire. 

Far different is the destiny which revealed truth, 
the explicit and repeated declaration of Christ and 
His Apostles, and the consistent teaching of all 
Christian ages, propose to our belief. In the life to 
come man is to preserve his personal identity, his 
individual existence and consciousness, while enjoy- 
ing the rewards due to his merits in this life, or 
undergoing the punishment meted out to evil deeds 
unrepented of to the end. 

The glory and bliss of the good servant essen- 
tially depend on his being conscious of having 
labored to do the will of the Master. The misery 
of the wicked and unfaithful must equally flow from 
the voice of the individual conscience, recalling the 
trust betrayed, the opportunities lost, the graces 
abused, the dear ones ruined by neglect, or example, 
or positive teaching, and the companions scandalized 



NOVISSIMA. 63 

and dragged down to the pit by the influence of a 
bad life. 

Among the multitudes of the blessed in heaven 
there is not an angelic spirit or a human being that 
does not preserve his individuality, his personal 
identity, as well as the perfection of his own vital 
acts in the fruition of that life eternal, of whose 
glories we are going to speak in detail. In like 
manner, in the multitudes of the wicked — fallen 
angels and fallen men — who are everlastingly sepa- 
rated from God, there is not one whose conscience 
does not evermore tell him that the loss endured is 
the just retribution for past misdeeds. 

The fatal fever dream of the East Indian, the 
Chinese, and the Japanese, that the soul is to be 
annihilated, or absorbed in the abyss of the Godhead, 
is only the perversion of the great truth revealed to 
man from the beginning — that the life after death, to 
which we are destined, consists in the closest union 
with Him who is the Fount of being and life. 

EEVEALED EELIGION TEACHES BLISSFUL UNION, 
NOT ABSOEPTION. 

No one among the great teachers of the Old Tes- 
tament has more frequently or more beautifully 
expressed the belief in this supernatural destiny, 
with its inheritance of bliss and glory, than the 
Prophet-Poet David: "I have said to the Lord, 
Thou art my God, for Thou hast no need of my 
goods. . . . The Lord is the portion of my 
inheritance and of my cup: it is Thou that will 
restore my inheritance to me. . . I set the Lord 
always in my sight: for He is at my right hand, 
that I be not. moved. Therefore my heart hath 



64 NOVISSIMA. 

been glad, and my tongue hath rejoiced: moreover, 
my flesh also shall rest in hope. . . Thou hast 
made known to me the ways of life, Thou shalt fill 
me with joy with Thy countenance: at Thy right 
hand are delights even to the end." * 

All through the songs of the "Sweet Singer of 
Israel" there runs, together with the literal meaning, 
expressive of the present needs of the warrior-king 
or the sentiments of the hour, a vein of prophetic 
inspiration, all pregnant with a higher meaning, and 
colored by the light of another sphere. The little 
theocratic community of the twelve tribes was but 
the forerunner of the Universal Church; David was 
the figure of Christ; and the passing events which 
awakened these songs preluded the future revolu- 
tions of humanity, the history of all time, and the 
everlasting years beyond time's remotest boundary. 
Hear the following strain : 

" The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom 
shall I fear? .... One thing I have asked 
of The Lord, this will I seek after, that I may 
dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my 
life: that I may see the delight of the Lord, and 
visit His temple. . . . My heart hath said to 
Thee: <Mv face hath sought Thee: Thy face, 
O Lord, will I still seek.'" f 

And again : 

"Oh! how Thou hast multiplied Thy mercy, 
O God! But the children of men shall put their 
trust under the covert of Thy wings. . They shall 
be inebriated with the plenty of Thy house : and 
Thou shalt make them drink of the torrent of Thy 
pleasure. For with Thee is the fountain of life: 
and in Thy light we shall see light." J 

* Psalm XV, 2-11. t Psalm XXVI, 1-8. $ Psalm XXXV, 8-10. 



NOYISSIMA. 65 

Elsewhere David expresses, with the same deflnite- 
ness, the longing of all created intelligences — a 
longing which is one of the vital forces of rational 
nature — to possess and enjoy the Supreme Good, and 
with It perfect and unalterable felicity : 

"As the hart panteth after the fountain of water, 
so my soul panteth after Thee, O God ! My soul 
hath thirsted after the strong living God : when shall 
I come and appear before the face of God ? ". * 

Whatever doubt, ambiguity, or obscurity, may 
arise in the mind of scholars from the Hebrew 
expressions equivalent to "seeing the face of the 
Lord," in passages which speak, or seem to speak, 
of the clear sight of God in the life to come, no 
shadow of doubt or uncertainty can rest on the 
mind of the true Christian, after Christ's own explicit 
declarations on this matter, after the texts already 
quoted from His Apostles, re-echoing or explaining 
the Master's doctrine. 

Again we repeat His dying declaration : 

"Now this is eternal life: That they may know 
Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom 
Thou hast sent." f 

"This is the promise which He hath promised 
us : life everlasting. . . . AYe are now the sons 
of God; and it hath not yet appeared what we 
shall be. We know, that, when He shall appear, we 
shall be like to Him: because we shall see Him as 
lie is." X 

Christ Himself, in another passage, || speaks of 
showing Himself to His faithful disciples as the one 
Supreme Reward kept in store for love persevering 
to the end : " He that loveth Me, shall be loved by 

* Psalm XLI, 2-3. t St. John, xvii, 3. 

$1 St. John, ii, 25; iii, 2. II St. John, xiv, 21. 



66 xovissniA. 

My Father : and I will love Him, and will manifest 
Myself to Him." 

And St. Paul : u "We see now through a glass 
darkly: but then face to face. Now I know in part : 
but then J] shall know even as I am known." * 

Thus, steadily does the divine Book shed its light 
on our path upward. Xow let the Church — "the 
ground and pillar of truth" — complete and explain 
the Book which she alone has compiled, sanctioned, 
and preserved for her children's instruction. Thus, 
between Him who died on the cross that we might 
have life and have it in its overflowing fullness, and 
her who is His spouse and the parent on earth of 
the children of God, we come to the Fountain of Life. 
"We may kneel down in spirit, and reverently taste, 
so far as we may with lips that death has not yet 
touched nor the angel of the resurrection hallowed, 
the living waters as they flow from the very bosom 
of the Deity. 

It was the Master who said: "Blessed are the 
pure of heart, for they shall see God ! " May He 
purify heart and mind while we venture to approach 
the Holy of Holies! 



THE BEATIFIC YISIOS. 



In one of the most memorable assemblages ever 
held in Christendom, in the Council of Florence 
(1439-1442), the bishops of the East and West, 
under the presidency of the Sovereign Pontiff, and 
in the presence of the Greek emperor, decreed, in 
conformity with revealed truth, the constant tradi- 
tions and universal belief in the Church, that "the 

*lCor.,xiii,l2. 



NOVISSIMA. 67 

souls of those who, after receiving baptism, have in- 
curred no stain of sin whatsoever, or who, after 
incurring such stain, have been purified in the body 

or out of the body are at once 

received into heaven, and clearly see God Himself as 
He is, in Three Persons and in one Substance, some, 
however, more perfectly than others, according to the 
diversity of their merits." * 

Here, then, is the great dogmatic fact which is set 
up as a beacon light on the very portals of the 
unseen and eternal world, declaring to all the chil- 
dren of men not only the nature and source of the 
felicity there enjoyed, but also the conditions on 
which any human being can attain to it. 

Those grafted on Christ by baptism, who have 
entirely preserved or recovered the innocence of their 
second birth in His Blood, "are at once received into 
heaven," when death's agony is over, " and clearly 
see God Himself as He is, in Three Persons and 
one Substance." 

There is, consequently, no sleep of the soul after 
death and until the general resurrection. The soul, 
by its nature capable of knowing God with that 
perfect knowledge imparted by the clear sight of His 
essence and of His interior life, is, moreover, raised 
and fitted by the Creator for the new and super- 
natural conditions of its heavenly existence. 

GOD SEEN AND KNOWN AS HE IS IN HIMSELF. 

Such is the reality held out as a reward for the 
Christian's labors, sufferings, self-sacrifice, and di- 
vinest virtues ; such is the " exceeding great reward " 
bestowed upon the deserving soul on its release from 
the body. 

*In the " Decree of Union." 



63 KOVISSIMA. 

Like men who have been toiling, from the first 
peep of dawn till far into the afternoon, up the slopes 
of some mighty alp, we are glad to have reached the 
summit, and to rest awhile there above the clouds, 
with earth far away beneath us, and nothing between 
us and heaven. Yes, but there is this difference 
between us, dear reader, and the weary alpine 
climbers, that they cannot remain long on these 
icy summits, and that the prospect which rewards 
their toil only discloses a wider earthly horizon. 
Above them stretch the black, impenetrable abysses 
of the firmament. 

As we pause on the height we have reached, we 
feel ourselves surrounded by the light and warmth 
of the Sun of Righteousness, while above us, around 
us, beneath us, are spread the immensities and 
glories of the heaven of heavens, and at its centre 
the abyss of life, of light, of joy, at which the 
exultant hosts of angels and Saints drink everlast- 
ingly. 

Is this, then, what we believe in, what we hope 
for, long for, pray for ? .... If so, we can 
afford, in the next chapter and the following, to 
satisfy the craving of our mind to know all about 
Him who is the Sun of these heavens, and the world 
after world of the blessed citizens among whom we 
are destined to live for evermore. 

It is good for us to be here; for one day in these 
courts^ — though only spent there in spirit and contem- 
plation — is worth years passed among the shadows, 
unrealities and deceptions of our own world of 
misery. 



HOVISSIMA. 69 



CHAPTER V. 



WITHIN THE OCEAN DEPTHS OF LIGHT AND 
LIFE. 



SEEING AND POSSESSING GOD. 

So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still 

Will lead me on 
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till 

The night is gone ; 
And with the morn those angel faces smile 
Which I have loved long since and lost awhile. 

— Newman. 

HAEMONIES. 

There is a supreme fitness between the nature of 
the reward kept in store for us by our Maker and 
Father, and the nature of the trial which His wis- 
dom, in the beginning, decreed to impose both on 
angels and on men. They were to live by faith 
during their period of probation ; the probation 
ended, they were to be rewarded by the Beatific 
Vision. 

The Church has never given an authoritative 
interpretation of the text of St. Paul in the first 
chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews : 

"When He bringeth the First-Born into the 
world, He saith : 'And let all the angels of God 
adore Him !?"'.* 

The bringing into the world of the Only-Begotten 
Son, as "the First-Born of the dead," or "the 
First-Born among many brethren," may surely be 

* Hebrews, i, 6. 



70 NOVISSIMA. 

interpreted as pointing to the first revelation of the 
whole design of the Incarnation made to the angelic 
world at the commencement of its period of proba- 
tion, as well as the first revelation of the mystery of 
God's own interior life, in the fact that in God there 
was a plurality or trinity of persons. 

St. Francis Xavier, in his catechetical instructions, 
says that such was the nature of the revelation made 
to the angels, and of the trial imposed on them. 

There is a fitness, a harmony, in this. But, be 
that as it may, we are left in no doubt concerning 
the nature of our own trials in this mortal life. 

All the duties enjoined by the divine law, all the 
virtues practiced in the fulfillment of our obliga- 
tions toward God, the neighbor, and ourselves, repose 
on faith — on the fact that we believe in Him whom we 
see not, and whose commands we obey, trusting 
firmly in His solemn promise : that the happiness of 
the life to come shall amply compensate all the trials 
of the present, repair the injustices of our actual 
condition, and satisfy to the utmost the longings, 
aspirations and needs of our rational nature. 

The greatest, the holiest, the most perfect, of the 
human race have toiled, suffered, lived, and died, 
looking forward with unflagging trust to the Author 
of their being, the Lawgiver and Judge of the whole 
earth, who has declared that to faith in Him, whom 
we love, obey, serve without seeing, shall succeed the 
clear knowledge, the undimmed sight of Himself in 
His glory ; that to the undying hope which sustains 
us amidst present ills, shall succeed the possession of 
the Supreme Good, and the repose of His eternal 
kingdom ; that all the charities practiced here below 
toward our fellow-men shall be rewarded by the 



NOVISSIMA. 71 

unspeakable love of that most blissful society where 
chanty reigns supreme in every bosom. 

There is in the providence of God over those 
angels and men, who are capable of knowing, ser- 
ving freely, and loving truly Him, the infinitely 
perfect, good, true, and lovable, a harmony most 
admirable to our intelligence. It is fitting that as 
faith in the unseen God, with His eternal world so 
far removed from our actual capacity, forms the very 
soul of our present life, so, in the life to come, we 
should have the veil of faith removed, and see Him 
whom we now believe in, find Him whom we now 
hope and long for, hold and possess perfectly, firmly, 
everlastingly, Him Avhom we now love, obey, serve, 
labor, live, and die for. 

One of the greatest and holiest men, whose genius 
has adorned Christianity and become the most 
glorious patrimony of the race — St. Augustine — 
says, somewhere: "Thou hast made us for Thee, 
O Lord ; and our heart knoweth no rest till it repose 
in Thee." The orange tree, if planted in a dark 
cellar, far away from the sunlight, may, indeed, take 
root in the soil and grow, and put forth sickly 
flowers, when the warm atmosphere of summer pene- 
'trates even the darksome cave around it. But the 
blossoms will fall, and no fruit will ever ripen on 
these branches. Even so, man's soul was created to 
bear perfect and immortal fruits of holiness and 
happiness, of which only the flowers can appear in 
this short life ; flowers without either color or per- 
fume when deprived of the atmosphere of super- 
natural faith; flowers which are only the promise of 
the fruit destined to ripen in the clear, full light of 
that Sun which illuminates the land of the living. 



72 NOVISSIMA. 

TENDENCIES AND ATTRACTIONS TO BE FULFILLED. 

Our mind, in studying His works in earth and 
ocean, in sky and firmament, discovers everywhere 
the evidence of His power, His wisdom, His love. 
His Revealed Word tells us that all we see around us 
was created for us. But all these wonderful works 
of the infinitely good and great God, all these gifts 
of His liberality, only kindle within us an unquench- 
able desire to see Him as He is in Himself, to look 
upon His countenance, to hear His voice, to know 
Him perfectly, to praise Him to His face, to let our 
heart go out to Him without stint in thanksgiving, 
gratitude, and filial love. 

This fair world resembles a vast and magnificent 
park belonging to a great prince, into which all men 
are admitted for the purposes of recreation, pleasure 
or study. Who can have enjoyed its shady walks, 
reposed by its running streams and gushing fount- 
ains, plucked the delicious fruits that hung over- 
head, and gone away from its varied scenes of solitude 
and restfulness without feeling and expressing the 
desire to see its liberal proprietor, to examine his 
dwelling-place, to form a personal acquaintance with 
him, if not to obtain the boon of his esteem or his, 
friendship? God, we know, in creating us and 
placing us on this earth, beside bestowing on us the 
faculty of appreciating all that is beautiful in our 
present abode — in our place of pilgrimage, rather — 
has implanted in our souls a keen desire to know the 
Author of the Universe, to come to Him, to enter 
into personal relations with Him, to win His friend- 
ship and His love. 

This aspiration of our nature, this irresistible 
tendency of the soul of man to know the Supreme 



NOVISSIMA. 73 

Truth, to love and possess the Infinitely Good and 
Fair, was intended as a mighty and ever-present 
impelling force, urging us toward God and the bliss 
of the other life. This yearning, innate in man, to 
know and see the Great Cause of all that exists, and 
in His light to possess the fullness of all knowledge, 
in His love to satisfy and rest forever the longing of 
his heart, must have its proper object in the life to 
come, else our present condition, with its beliefs, 
its hopes, and its efforts, would, in more than one 
respect, be a mockery. 

HERE WE BELIEVE: THERE WE SHALL SEE AND 
KNOW. 

Here, then, w r e believe: in the hereafter, we shall 
see clearly, and know the Author of our being and of 
all things, " even as we are known " of Him. Here 
we labor and suffer in the firm hope of a requital 
and a reward : there our expectation shall be sur- 
passed by a recompense such as that no understand- 
ing, in this life, can grasp either its nature or its 
greatness. 

Kevealed truth, uttering for our comfort and en- 
couragement the solemn promise of Him who is the 
Author and Finisher of our faith, says : " Blessed 
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
who according to His great mercy hath regenerated 
us unto a lively hope, . . . unto an inheritance 
incorruptible, and undefiled, and that cannot fade, 
reserved in heaven for you. . . . Wherein you 
shall greatly rejoice, if now you must be for a little 
time made sorrowful in divers temptations : that the 
trial of your faith (much more precious than gold 
which is tried by the fire) may be found unto praise 



74 NOYISSDIA. 

and glory and honor at the appearing of Jesus Christ, 
whom having not seen you love; in whom also now, 
though you see Him not, you believe; and believing 
shall rejoice with joy unspeakable and glorified, 
receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your 
souls." * 

Another of the three who beheld Christ trans- 
figured on the Mount thus speaks of that end and 
consummation of the Christian's hope : " This is the 
promise which He hath promised us, life everlasting. 
. "We are now the sons of God : and it 
hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know, 
that, when He shall appear, we shall be like to Him : 
because ice shall see Him as He is." f 

THE TWOFOLD FOUNT OF HEAVENLY BLISS. 

We are, therefore, brought, at the very outset, to 
examine the nature of that Beatific Vision — that 
bliss-bestowing, clear sight of the Godhead, which is 
the very inmost spring of the felicity of man and 
angel in that life of unending joy and unfading 
glory. 

And let us at once hasten to say, that heavenly 
felicity arises from two sources — the Beatific Vision 
as the principal and essential, and the society of the 
blessed as the secondary and accidental. We shall 
endeavor to make clear to the reader the immense 
importance of both the one and the other. 

SITTING NEAR THE FOUNT AND DISCOURSING ON IT. 

If our intelligent, educated readers will pause a 
moment to think how this unclouded knowledge of 
the divine Essence can be to every created intelligence 

*1 St. Peter, i, 3-9. tl St. John, ii, 25; iii, 2. 



NOVISSIMA. 75 

the cause of supreme and incomprehensible happi- 
ness, they can help themselves very much toward a 
perfect understanding of the present subject by 
recalling what is happening around them in the 
world of science, or by reflecting on their own per- 
sonal experience. 

THE JOY OF DISCOVERING THE UNKNOWN. 

It is admitted that no pleasure, no satisfaction, is 
comparable to that experienced by the discovery of 
some truth hitherto unknown. Scientists will re- 
member the rapture which took possession of 
Archimedes when an accident revealed to him the 
means of ascertaining the specific gravity of metals. 
Rushing out of the bath, where he found that his 
own body lost in the water a weight proportionate vj 
the liquid volume it displaced, he exclaimed : " I 
have found it ! I have found it ! " This intellectual 
rapture, this delight of the rational soul, is shared, 
in a greater or less degree, by the discoverers, the 
inventors, the geniuses, of every age, whose labors 
enlarge the domain of knowledge. Think of the 
feelings of a man who, after years of laborious 
research, succeeds in analyzing a body which until 
then had resisted the action of every solvent, baffled 
the attempts of the most skillful chemists to fix the 
relative proportions of its component elements. 
Science reserves its highest honors, its most liberal 
emoluments, for men who achieve what their fellows 
never achieved before them — penetrated deeper into 
the mysteries of nature, annihilated space by the 
employment of steam locomotion, or laid a metallic 
cable beneath the ocean to enable continent to con- 
verse with continent. 



76 NOVISSIMA. 

THE JOY OF SEEING CLEARLY THE AUTHOR OF 
ALL THINGS. 

"What, then, must be the happiness of the man 
who is enabled to see clearly the divine. Author of 
nature itself, to gaze down into the depths of that 
abysmal Being, in whom all is unlimited perfection 
and loveliness — infinite intelligence, infinite wisdom, 
infinite goodness, justice, mercy, liberality; who is 
the Life of our life, the Source and the End of our 
existence; our Maker and our Repairer; our Sov- 
ereign Lord, Lawgiver, and Judge ; our Father and 
Rewarder — who, having made us for Himself, tries 
us by the labors and temptations of this life, only 
to make us worthy of Himself, only to bring us 
to Himself at the end of the trial, and to bestow on 
us, as our only fitting reward, Himself and His 
oicn glory. Aye, truly, no home is worthy of the 
children of God save God's own bosom. 

The magnificence of this truth will dawn and 
grow upon us as we proceed to explore and to 
fathom, slowly and reverently, the shining abysses of 
truth disclosed by the study of what the Church 
means by the Beatific Vision. 

SUPERXATURALXESS OF THIS CLEAR SIGHT OF THE 
GODHEAD. 

The clear sight of God as He is in Himself is 
above the ken of bodily eve or created intellect. 
For there is no proportion between the capacity or 
natural powers of any finite understanding and the 
infinite God. Then the Beatific Vision implies not 
only an unclouded sight and clear knowledge of the 
Godhead, but a full insight into the mystery of His 
interior life. ]S"ow, such an insight, even among 



KOVISSIMA. 77 

persons of the same nature and rank, is entirely 
beyond the conditions and requirements of ordinary 
social intercourse. It is a most merciful dispensa- 
tion of Him who made man for the society of his 
fellow-men here below, that we are not gifted with 
the power of reading each other's mind and heart; of 
penetrating to the secret springs of our neighbor's 
life; of knowing his thoughts, his aims, his resolves. 
This power, and the knowledge it involves, would be 
destructive of both our liberty and our happiness. 
Hence it is that the Creator of the soul reserves to 
Himself this insight into the inmost depths of our 
moral nature. 

SECEETS WHICH THE CREATOR OF SOULS RESERVES 
TO HIMSELF. 

If we reflect a little on this head, we shall remem- 
ber that, even in a family, children do not know the 
secrets of their parents, or parents those of their chil- 
dren, unless voluntarily disclosed to them. Between 
the nearest and dearest relatives, therefore, between 
the most intimate friends, there are, in the inmost 
lives of each, depths absolutely hidden from the 
other, and which must remain a secret forever, unless 
one choose freely to lift the veil mercifully woven 
over every conscience by the hand of Him who made 
the soul and will judge it. 

We see, therefore, that even where we are best 
acquainted with our equals and neighbors, where we 
are most familiar and intimate with relatives and 
friends, we are content to know them, as they know 
us, by the qualities which appear on the surface, by 
the virtues which shine forth in a whole life of con- 
sistent uprightness, purity, and generosity. We 



78 kovisseua. 

cannot reach the heart from which good and evil 
flow, coloring the whole of our neighbor's conduct 
and our own. 

The best 1 and noblest — as we know by experience 
— find it one of the greatest delights of life, one of 
the rarest blessings vouchsafed by a kind Providence 
to His chosen servants, to be admitted to familiarity 
and intimacy with Godlike souls who, in the expan- 
sive intercourse of true friendship, open up to those 
they love the 'depths of their own inmost life and 
conscience. Most blessed and most blissful is the 
privilege of the man or woman who, having found a 
friend and companion in every way after God's heart 
and their own, enjoy, in the unreserved communion 
of thought and aim, of feeling and judgment, of 
taste and inclination, such heart-satisfaction, such 
congeniality of souls, as seems a foretaste of heaven. 

Ah! these foretastes, these spiritual instincts, 
needs, yearnings, and satisfactions, are indeed, in 
this life, only the secret touches of His hand, who 
made our hearts for Himself, who will not give them 
rest or contentment till He brings us face to face 
with Himself. 

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCES UXK.XOWX TO THE 
MOST LEARXED. 

Even the impenetrable mystery which, to the eye 
of the scientist, as well as to that of the most unlet- 
tered peasant, envelopes not only the nature of the 
material substances around us, but still more, if 
possible, the origin and secret of the lowest and the 
highest forms of life, should teach man here below 
how far above the comprehension of the created 
intellect is the divine Mature — that Substance which 



NOVISSIMA. 79 

transcends all substance ; how unfathomable to the 
natural ken of man or angel is the secret of His 
life, with whom alone is the life-giving power as well 
as the knowledge of all life and all substance. 

The geologist and the chemist may analyze the 
piece of granite broken from the oldest rocks, or the 
sand on the river bank or the shore of ocean, and 
determine the substances or elements that enter into 
their composition ; or they may discuss, with more 
or less of uncertainty, the respective ages of the 
rocks they are thus comparing. But the substances 
themselves, and the laws which governed in the 
beginning the formation of these rocks, or which even 
now bind together the molecules of the grain of 
sand, or the atoms which form each molecule — what 
scientist has discovered or can disclose them ? 

To the most learned of mankind the sand on the 
seashore and the grass on the field offer impenetrable 
mysteries. What, then, must His nature, His sub- 
stance, His interior life, who made the land and the 
sea, who made the earth and that wondrous universe, 
of which our telescopes only enable us to discover a 
little corner? 

conclusion: god is, naturally, the mysteey 
of mysteries. 

God is the mystery of mysteries. How could the 
intellect of man, for whom the substance of a grain 
of sand and the organism of a blade of grass are 
inexplicable mysteries, grasp the nature of the 
Infinite or fathom the secret of His life? 

What, then, must be the joy of the created spirit, 
exalted and enabled by the Creator Himself to pene- 
trate by clear knowledge this mystery of the divine 



80 NOVISSIMA. 

Nature, this secret of that most perfect, most bliss- 
ful and bliss-bestowing life of Him who is called in 
Scripture the living God? 

St. Paul contrasts the imperfect and unsatisfactory 
knowledge of God and divine things, to which even 
Christians can attain in this life, to the perfection of 
knowledge reserved to the life to come. "We know 
in part," he says, "and we prophesy in part. But 
when that which is perfect is come, that which is in 
part shall be done away. When I was a child, 
I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought 
as a child. But when I became a man, I put away 
the things of a child. We see now through a glass 
in a dark manner: but then face to face. Now 
I know in part : but then I shall know even as I am 
known." * 

This vision, as is, indeed, all that pertains to our 
adoption as children of God and to this eternal 
union with the divine Being by knowledge and love, 
is in itself supernatural. Hence, the power super- 
added in heaven to the human intellect, to enable it 
to see God as He is in Himself, is also supernatural. 
It is called by the schools of theology "the light of 
glory." 

THE FIRST MOMENT OF THE BEATIFIC VISION. 

How can we form ourselves or express to others 
what takes place immediately after death, when the 
sinless, stainless soul, passing beyond the veil which, 
during the present existence, hides from our view 
the world unseen, the world of eternal realities, is 
brought "face to face" with the Creator and Ruler 
of worlds, with Him who is the Source of being, of 
greatness, goodness, beauty, grandeur, light, and 

*1 Cor., xiii, 9-12. 



KOVISSIMA. 81 

life ? He, the Almighty Father, has been preparing 
the faithful soul for this supreme moment. Every 
faculty is strengthened for the enjoyment of the new 
existence about to begin. We, in this life, can only 
strain our imagination to picture to ourselves the 
rapture of that first look on the unveiled face of the 
Sun of Righteousness. Do as we will, in meditating 
on the Beatific Vision, we fancy ourselves gazing on 
some transcendently beautiful and glorious form, 
like that of the most Godlike we have met with, 
conversed with, worshiped and loved, during our 
earthly pilgrimage. But the Godhead has no bodily 
form, no human semblance. And we may, to help 
our mind toward some conception of the truth, try 
to recall what we felt when we were admitted to the 
intimacy of some holy and beautiful soul — like 
St. Philip Neri, or St. Francis of Sales, or St. Francis 
Xavier; a soul all aglow with the divine fire, like 
Moses after his communion with God on the Mount, 
and bearing about with it on the bodily features a 
reflection of the divine splendors resembling the 
heavenly tints on a mountain peak after sunset. In 
conversation with such beings one feels that there is 
a something divine. One forgets the bodily form, 
which is only a transparent veil behind which the 
beautiful spirit is visible to our spirit. There is 
sweetness, there is light, there is strength, and there 
is peace unspeakable, in this close communion here 
below with men or women, from whom the sweet 
odor of Christ goes sensibly forth, in whose speech 
and form the Spirit of God makes Himself felt, as 
an unearthly virtue lifting us above ourselves. 

Was it not so with our Lord while He still walked 
the earth, teaching, healing, comforting, and saving? 



82 xovissniA. 

What, then, will it be when, arrived at the portals 
of the everlasting home, we shall behold the Father, 
and all the desires and yearnings of our human 
spirit are gratified, as in Him the living God appears, 
and the eves of the soul take in that uncreated 
beauty, while the abyss of Love Eternal opens out, 
like the arms of a mighty ocean, to take the pilgrim 
into Its bosom? when Truth Itself will say : "Well 
done, thou good and faithful servant?" 

AVe read and we speak of the living God: do we 
ever bring home the thought to ourselves that it is 
He — Father most loving, true, and just — into whose 
embrace we expect to come one day, and that soon? 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

A child, taken away from the parental arms and 
long, long absent from that dear presence which is 
upon earth the image of God's fatherly tenderness 
and care, yearns with all the force of filial affection 
for the day of re-union. Oh ! the bliss of the hour 
which gives son or daughter to a father's arms or a 
mother's heart ! Human nature, the experience of 
the noblest and most heroic, attests that, once re- 
stored to the incomparable sweetness of parental love, 
one has no thought but to be forever in those arms 
and on that heart. And this deep, deep draught of 
purest love and happiness is in proportion to the 
long days of separation. 

Can these experiences of what is most holy and 
touching in human life enable us to conceive some- 
what of the rapture, the blissful repose, the utter 
and unspeakable satisfaction of every power and 
faculty, in this first embrace given to the long-tried 
exile in this life, by Him who created the father's 



novissoia. 83 

heart and the mother's unfathomable depths of ten^ 
derness ? What is created goodness compared with 
the Uncreated? What are human love and tender- 
ness, in their widest reach and their divinest inten- 
sity, in comparison with His, who created us because 
He loved us, who gave His Only-Begotten Son to 
death for us, who will have His adopted children 
receive no other reward than Himself and a share in 
His own most blissful life throughout all the endless 
cycles of eternity? 

We try to approach these awful depths of the, 
Love, infinite and incomprehensible, of that Father 
Avho is in heaven. Thinking, writing, speaking, 
upon this sublime subject, one is like a babe in arms, 
gifted with an exquisite sense of harmony, ravished 
by the sounds of a heavenly music, but incapable of 
expressing by one syllable of articulate language 
what passes in its soul, or of executing on the sim-, 
plest instrument one melody or one note of all those 
that are still charming and enchaining its sense. 



CHAPTER VI. 



STILL AMONG THE DEPTHS. 

A little longer, and thy heart, beloved, 

Shall beat forever with a love divine ; 
And joy so pure, so mighty, so eternal, 

No creature knows and lives, will then be thine. 

THE POSSESSION OF GOD AND OF ALL THAT GOD HAS. 

Such are the sublimity and magnificence of the 
perspectives opened out before us by the Church's 
doctrine on the life to come, and the nature of the 



84 NOVISSIMA. 

beatitude enjoyed there, that the thought of it, in 
cool and calm reflection, comes back upon the mind, 
and causes a fear and sinking of the heart. We feel 
like one suddenly elevated from debasement and 
poverty to regal rank, pomp and splendor. We look 
around on palaces, domains, and crowds of courtiers 
and attendants, and ask ourselves : " Can all this be 
real? really mine?" 

If we have not quoted in vain the very words of 
Christ Himself, and the solemn utterances of His 
Apostles, the Sacred Scriptures must have given us a 
solid and immovable ground on which to rest our 
faith in this doctrine, as defined by the Council of 
Florence and believed by all the children of the 
Church. But it may still more strengthen our faith 
to listen to the testimony of the early Christian ages 
on this very doctrine of the Beatific Vision as we 
have been expounding it. 

WITHIN HIS BOSOM WHO IS THE LIGHT AND THE 
LIFE. 

St. Irenseus, martyr, and Bishop of Lyons, who 
lived in the century immediately following that of 
the Apostles, who was, moreover, both a disciple 
of St. Poly carp and Papias — themselves disciples of 
St. John the Evangelist — speaks on the nature of 
heavenly bliss with no uncertain or hesitating voice : 

"Eternal life," he says, " becomes the possession 
of each one by the fact of his seeing God. . . . 
For, just as those who see the light are within the 
light and receive its radiance, even so those who see 
God are within God — the recipients of His bright- 
ness. And this radiance gives them life. Where- 
fore those who see God are the recipients of life. By 



NOVISSIMA. 85 

this means He, who is beyond our comprehension, 
makes Himself visible and comprehensible to man, 
in order that He may impart life to such as perceive 
and see Him. For, as He is unsearchable in His 
greatness, so is He unspeakable in His goodness, 
which impels Him to give life to those who see Him. 

"Inasmuch as one cannot be a living being with- 
out having life; and as our continuance in life comes 
from God's allowing us to partake of it; and as the 
partaking of God consists in seeing Him and enjoy- 
ing His goodness ; hence it follows that man shall 
see God and shall live by thus seeing Him, being 
thereby rendered immortal and lifted up to God's 
own height." * 

Of course, at the very beginning of Christianity, 
and when persecution decimated the rising Christian 
societies in the East and the West, theology had not 
become the carefully and clearly formulated science 
it was in the thirteenth century. Its terms had 
not been settled once and forever. Nevertheless, 
the thought of the great Martyr-Bishop of Lyons is 
manifest : 

" To see God is to possess eternal life. The light 
proceeding from His substance, which creates in the 
soul the power and fact of vision, or clear sight, 
brings us within the light itself, renders His being, 
of itself, incapable of being seen by created faculty, 
visible to our ken, and places the goodness, which is 
also unspeakable because infinite, within the grasp of 
our affection. And this clear sight and this posses- 
sion constitute the life eternal. The very substance 
of this life is to be made to partake of God — -that is, 
to see Him and enjoy His goodness." 

*Iren8eus, "Advers. Heerescs," L. IV, xxxvii. 



86 NOVISSIMA. 

AT "THE FOUNTAIN ITSELF OF TRUTH AND GOOD." 

Coming down from the second to the fourth cen- 
tury, we hear the great St. Gregory Nazianzen 
affirming that the contemplation of the Sovereign 
Good is the reward of our labors, and the end held 
forth to us by the Christian religion : 

" May we be able/' he exclaims, " to come here- 
after to the Fountain Itself, and to behold the pure 
truth with pure minds, receiving there the reward of 
the labor endured in the pursuit of virtue, in that 
we shall there more fully enjoy the Sovereign Good 
and Its contemplation. Such is the aim which souls 
in love with the study of divine things hold forth as 
the end toward which our present religious trials are 
directed." * 

RECEIVED INTO THE LIGHT OF THE HOLY TRINITY. 

In another discourse, speaking of the blessed in 
heaven, he says : "A light which no words can de- 
scribe will receive them, together with the sight of 
the holy and royal Trinity shining with a purer and 
brighter radiance, and permeating with Its whole 
substance every part of the soul. And this contem- 
plation of itself I judge to be what is principal in 
the kingdom of heaven." f 

i". is "to i 

WITH HIM. 

Listen, now, to what this great archbishop's devoted 
friend, St. Gregory of Nyssa, wrote. He is explain- 
ing the text, " Blessed are the pure of heart, for 
they shall see God : " 

* " Oratio in laudem Caesarii ; " now marked "Oratio XIV." 
+ Ibidem. 



Hovissima. 87 

" The promise is such a mighty one that it ex- 
ceeds the extreme limit of bliss. What could any 
one desire after such a blessing as this, since we 
possess all things in Him whom it is given us to see? 
For the wonted Scriptural meaning of ' to see' is 
'to possess;' as in the passage, 'that thou mayest see 
the good things of Jerusalem' (Psalm CXXVII, 5,) 
l - to see ' means that ' thou mayest find ; ' and again 
(Isaias, xxvi, 10,) 'he shall not see the glory of the 
Lord/ the Prophet declaring that the not-seeing will 
be the not-partaking of. So, then, he who sees God, 
hath obtained all good in Him whom he seeth, life 
without end, without interruption, life eternal, bliss 
unfailing, boundless dominion, unmixed joy, the true 
light, glory above all change, perpetual exultation — 
all good, in one word." * 

"the eewaed of the just is to behold the 



From that same fourth century other voices reach 
us. St. Ambrose declares : " This is the reward of 
the just, that they see the face of God, and that light 
which enlighteneth every man coming into this 
world. . . . Then, the veil being taken away 
from the face of God, we shall be allowed to con- 
template His glory." t 

St. John Chrysostom : " Those who are there [in 
heaven] continually behold God, their King, inas- 
much as they see Him not only present before them, 
but beautifying the entire heavenly abode by the 
splendor of His glory." X 

*"DeBeatitudinibus." t"De Bono Mortis," xi, 49. 

t"Orat. Panegyrica in S. Phil." 



88 KOVISSIMA. 

"the clear sight of god is the fulfillment 
of the promise." 

Lastly, thus speaks St. Augustine, the great spir- 
itual son of Ambrose : "In the clear sight of God is 
the fulfillment of the promise held out to our delight 
and desire. . . . Christ will then hand over to 
God, His Father, the kingdom, when He will have 
brought the believers to the contemplation of God, 
in which is the aim of all our good deeds, as well as 
eternal rest, and the joy that can never be taken 
from us." *■ 

And from near Jerusalem comes this voice: 
" Those who will have done good deeds shall shine 
like the Sun among the angels of God throughout 
the life without end, and in company with our Lord 
Jesus Christ, always seeing Him and by Him seen, 
flooded with perpetual joy flowing from Him." f 

These are only a few testimonies from among a 
host of saintly authorities. Let us here recall what 
was said in a preceding chapter — not only that each 
of the Saints who enjoy the bliss of heaven preserves 
there the consciousness of being the very same 
human being who believed, hoped, labored on earth 
to fulfill the divine "Will, but that the acts of 
knowledge, love, praise, and thanksgiving, elicited in 
heaven, are the vital acts of the human soul itself. 
This is to caution the reader against the plausible 
errors of those who would have the divine Essence 
so fill, permeate and overflow the beings of the 
blessed in the Beatific Vision, and the blissful life 
of which ifc is the principle, that the action of God 
in them supersedes, annihilates or absorbs all proper 
vital action of the soul itself. 

*"De Trinit.," L. I, ix-x. 

tSt. John Damascene, "De Fide Orthodoxa," L. IV, In flne. 



kovissimA. 89 

Having thus stated the doctrinal fact of the 
Beatific Vision, or the clear sight of God as He is 
in Himself, let us endeavor to arrive at some clear 
conception of the transformation divinely wrought 
in the soul and its faculties to enable it to see God 
as He is in Himself, and in this supernal light to 
know all things as He knows and sees them. 

Had we been destined to live a thousand or two 
thousand years even on earth, and were we to 
devote to the attentive study and contemplation of 
divine things the principal part of our lives, our 
time would never suffice to obtain a very superficial 
notion of the various spheres of knowledge that 
come within the scope of the blessed in heaven. 

The very thought of the Beatific Vision and of 
the fact that it opens up to the eye of the soul in the 
life to come the divine Essence, the being and life 
of the Triune Godhead, is apt to produce, even on 
the serious-minded, something like the effect pro- 
duced on the nerves and the brain by the sud- 
den approach to a precipice of incalculable depth, 
beneath which stretches out, from horizon to horizon, 
the most glorious of prospects. One recoils, dizzy 
and almost terror-stricken, from the verge, even 
though beyond and beneath lie the magnificences of 
a world unexplored and unsuspected. 

Oh ! the worlds upon worlds of being, of grandeur, 
of beauty, and loveliness, which are to be disclosed 
to the eye of our mind — aye, and to the eye of our 
glorified body as well — in that eternal life where all 
shall be a new, a divine existence! 

THE LIGHT OF GLORY. 

It behooves us, then, to examine and understand, 
to the best of our ability, everything connected with 



90 KOVISSIMA. 

it. Let us, then, return to some of the questions 
already considered too briefly. 

What is that "light of glory," of which Christian 
theology speaks as a divine help bestowed on the 
created intellect for the express purpose of enabling 
it to behold the Godhead in His own native splen- 
dor? We are to make use of the analogies of the 
natural order as a means toward understanding the 
truths and facts of the supernatural and heavenly. 
Just, then, as the soundest and strongest human eye, 
during this mortal life, needs, to enable it to see, the 
light which makes all objects visible — even so, in 
the life to come, both our interior and exterior sense 
need, in order to see the sublime objects of the 
supernatural world, a light in harmony with that 
world, supernatural and divine. 

Understand this well before proceeding further. 
The bodily organ may be as powerful and piercing 
as that of the eagle, yet nothing would or could be 
visible to it if no light whatever existed to bring 
external objects within the scope of vision. With 
the aid of light, on the contrary, spread over earth 
and sky, the organ of vision embraces, in a manner, 
the universe. Now, while we are in this body of 
flesh, God and the entire spiritual world arc shrouded 
in mist or darkness impenetrable. 

When the soul is freed from the body, and no 
moral obstacle interferes with her enjoyment of the 
rewards of the perfect life, the Creator, to prepare 
her for that clear knowledge of Himself, which is 
the reward of faith, perfects all her powers. The 
supernatural element which He adds to the faculties 
He has Himself created, is most aptly called, both 
by the schools of theology and by the councils, "the 



NOVISSIHA. 91 

light of glory." It produces in the soul a manifold 
effect. It elevates the mind to a divine state of 
existence and vital action, enabling it to see the 
divine Essence as It is in Itself, expanding its 
capacity so as to embrace, so far as a finite being 
can, the divine immensity. It makes the divine 
Being, in every line of Its infinite perfection, beauty, 
and loveliness, visible to the mind, intelligible to the 
understanding. So that this glorious Essence, this 
infinitely perfect Being, becomes united to the intel- 
lect, just as when, of a sudden, to absolute darkness 
here below on earth succeeds light, flooding the 
whole of creation — not only the light itself pours 
into the open eye, but it brings with it the image of 
the external world, thus suddenly revealed. 

ELEVATION AND EXPANSION OF _ OUR FACULTIES. 

In like manner — but in a manner more wonderful 
and more perfect far than this analogy conveys — the 
" light of glory," and with it the revealed Essence 
of the Godhead, floods the soul, elevating, expand- 
ing, filling it, standing, within it and without, one 
visible, intelligible, clearly-discerned ocean of being, 
perfection, beauty, and loveliness, seen in its height 
and depth, its length and breadth — a glorious and 
ecstatic vision. 

And with the divine light of glory thus elevating 
and enlarging the mind, or intellectual powers of man, 
in the Beatific Vision, is inseparably and simul- 
taneously given that energy and capacity to the will 
(or affections), which enables it to hold, possess, enjoy, 
that Sovereign Good, for which the soul has been 
yearning in exile. Thereby the divine Object, which 
the mind apprehends with such marvelous distinct- 



NOYISSIMA, 

ness, is given to the heart to love with like intensity. 
The elevation and enlargement of the twc 
are made harmoniously. 

Our purpose now, however, is more with the 
operation of the intellect in the Beatific Visi 
ing in mind that the degree of love, and, therefore, 
of bliss, is proportionate to the degree of know] _ _. 

ANALOGIES FROM NATURAL SCIENCE. 

There are many considerations which can assist 
the mind in arriving at a dim. but not incorrect, 

conception of the scope of that Beatific Vision; of 
the immense variety of objects which the "light of 

glory" brings within the field of the mind's clear 
and perfect knowledge. The attentive study of this 
single point, with the aid of Christian theolo_ 
that true philosophy which investigates these heights 
and depths with the lamp of faith, lifts up a serious 
soul above itself, and fills with a divine ardor the 
most advanced scholar as well as the simple-minded 
believer. 

We know from daily experience that the light 
diffused throughout all space renders the m : 
worlds from which it travels visible to the inhabi- 
tants of this little earth of ours. The most power- 
ful instruments devised by science help the naked 
discern such as its unaided power could not 
perceive, and to form probable conjectures about the 
arrangement and movements of these mysterious 
masses ::' suns and systems placed by the Almighty 
Hand at such enormous distances from us and from 
each other. The 6] troscope has wonderfully 
science toward a knowledge of their physical consti- 
tution ; and other kindred instruments, by measuring 
the action of the waves of light, afford elemer. 



KOVISSIMA. 93 

calculating the distance of these far-off provinces of 
creation which we shall thoroughly know and clearly 
see one day. 

AIDS THUS AFFORDED TO OUR FACULTIES FOR AC- 
QUIRING KNOWLEDGE. 

The advance of astronomical and physical dis- 
covery, the progress made in perfecting scientific 
instruments of every kind, do but help to enlarge 
our view of the universe, to bring new cosmic sys- 
tems within the field of study, and to enable the 
human mind, by careful and conscientious observa- 
tion, to form more exact notions about material 
substances, their constitution, and the laws which 
govern them. 

Even our puny globe affords to the intellect of 
man a field of study, investigation, and discovery, 
which will test to the utmost the patience and science 
of unborn generations. Men bestow 'the highest 
fame and the richest rewards on the successful labors 
in this field — on such as enlarge the boundaries of 
human knowledge, or help, by their inventions, to 
subject the material world and the great elemental 
forces of nature to the uses of human life and the 
progress of industry. In this field, narrow as it 
really is in comparison with the boundless universe 
outside of our globe, men find a noble exercise for 
their intellectual faculties and no mean source of 
contentment and comparative happiness. 

IN THE BEATIFIC VISION ALL IS INTUITION, NOT 
INDUCTION. 

Now, take this consideration, based on the safest 
and most honorable experience, for a starting point 



94 XOVISSIMA. 

to enable you to estimate the infinite field opened up 
to clear and full knowledge — no longer to timid in- 
vestigation and a slow and patient observing and 
chronicling of facts and conclusions, but to a divine 
knowledge, second only to the infinite and connatural 
knowledge of God Himself. ... As if some 
angel, by the divine command, took us all of a 
sudden up to these eternal heights, and touched mind 
and heart with that light and flame of the Beatific 
Vision, let us gaze awhile on all that it discloses to 
the ravished soul. 

WHAT IS SEEX AMID THIS OCEAX OF LIGHT AXD LIFE. 

""Who beholds on earth the greatest and wisest of 
men," says one who was both wise and great as well 
as holy, "only sees the external seeming; the internal 
beauty and perfection of the soul he cannot see with 
the eye. But whoso enjoys the clear sight of God 
sees the perfections and the wealth of the divine 
Being, both interior and exterior. The blessed see 
the Fount of Life, the Fount of Light and Wisdom, 
the Fount of Goodness and Truth, of Beauty and 
Sweetness, of Joy and Bliss. They see the infinity 
of His essence, the immensity of His greatness, the 
length of His eternity, the sublime height of His 
majesty, and the unchangeable firmness of His 
throne. 

" They see that almighty Power which made all 
things, the AVisdom which designed and executed 
this universal frame, the Goodness which gives to all 
things their perfection and binds all things to Itself. 
They see the Mercy which forgives guilt, and the 
Justice which punishes what has not been forgiven. 

" They see, finally, the divine Persons, and the 
eternal and most perfect way that they proceed from 



NOVISSIMA. 95 

each other ; how the Son is begotten of the Father 
as His Word and Wisdom, abiding eternally in Him ; 
how the Holy Spirit proceeds from both as Their 
love and abides in both; how these Three are dis- 
tinguished from eacli other by Their proper personal 
characteristics, so that They are Three Persons 
really subsisting, and that all the while Theirs is 
one Essence, one indivisible Divinity, one Power, 
one Wisdom, one Goodness, one Majesty, one Light, 
one Immensity, one Eternity. 

"All who see God, see all these things with clear, 
unclouded eye, firmly, unchangeably, and distinctly; 
not as we conceive of them, under diverse notions 
and mental visions, but with one simple and most 
luminous vision of the mind." * 

TAKE UP AND SPELL THIS SYLLABLE BY SYLLABLE. 

This comprehensive glance at the divine Being, 
as we conceive It to be unveiled in the Beatific 
Vision to the souls of the blessed, may not strike 
the person who reads the foregoing as at all affording 
a clue to the interior glory of that Ocean of per- 
fection, goodness, loveliness — to the incomprehensible 
felicity of the Three divine Persons whose mutual 
knowledge and love of each other and of that 
Essence which overflows and flowers into this living 
Trinity. Yet, by taking up the pregnant passage 
just quoted, and by spelling it to one's self, sentence 
by sentence, and thought after thought, the subject 
grows on the mind; one horizon opens out into a 
wider, and that only leads to a wider still, the depths 
of that divine perfection and loveliness deepening 
and widening as we advance; and one infinite per- 
fection connecting with another, and filling the soul 

*Lessius, " De Suramo Bono," L. II, c. viii. 



96 STOVISSIMA. 

of the beholder with ever-increasing rapture, as light- 
begets light within these abysses, as glory leads up 
to glory, as one mighty well-spring of life and truth, 
of knowledge and love, of grandeur and beauty, calls 
out to the soul to pause and drink ; and then another 
and another gushes forth within the bosom of that 
Spirit whose varied riches not all the cycles of eter- 
nity can exhaust for the intellect which contemplates 
or the heart that enjoys. 

Then we are to consider that the clear sight of the 
Godhead; the intimate knowledge of His life, His 
being, His perfections; the unveiling to our eyes of 
the secret of that divine Mind, which conceived the 
plan of the universe, and of that Free Will which 
called it into being, is not the only effect of the 
"light of glory." 

THE DIVIXE MYSTERIES UNVEILED. 

The Mysteries which form the object of the Chris- 
tian's faith in this life, and in which he believes 
because God has revealed them, stand manifest and 
intelligible in the light of the other world. The 
union, in our own persons, of the soul with the 
body, of a purely spiritual substance with material 
organism, does, indeed, pave the way toward con- 
ceiving the Incarnation as possible. But in the 
light of the eternal day we shall understand clearly 
how our spiritual soul was created and marvelously 
fitted for the twofold purpose of rational and animal 
life; and how God became very Man, uniting, really 
and physically, the divine nature with the human in 
the Person of the Son, without ceasing to be God, 
or suffering, in His divinity, loss, or change, or 
eclipse of splendor. 



NOVISSIMA. 97 

HEAVEN AND ITS TWOFOLD EMPIRE SEEN AS ONE 
SEES A HALL. 

In this divine light are also clearly seen all the 
wonders of *that heaven — God's glorious dwelling- 
place and the home of angelic servants and human 
children. Holy Writ calls the place by various 
names. It is not only heaven, and the heaven of 
heavens, but the kingdom or empire of God — His 
house, His city, His temple, and the land of the 
living. We shall see, as we explain what relates to 
the place, its inhabitants, and their occupations, the 
fitness of all these names. Suffice it now to say 
that, together with His own Being in all its perfec- 
tion, God will enable the blessed soul to see the 
magnificence and glory of that heavenly city, that 
immense and everlasting empire, which is the home 
and the possession of His elect. It is but just and 
reasonable that each new citizen of heaven should 
thus at once become perfectly acquainted with his 
abode for everlasting; with every one of those who 
dwell therein; with the hierarchies and orders of 
angels; with those of his own kind — men and 
women of every degree of merit, virtue, and heroic 
sanctity — God's most perfect creation in the moral 
world, all and each standing out distinctly revealed 
in their respective degrees of excellence and glory. 

Then, as the sight of that glorious society bursts 
upon the soul, it also clearly discerns God's wonder- 
ful providence over His own elect, and the whole 
scheme of that Wisdom which a reacheth from end 
to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly." * 
It will be made manifest how the material world was 
created and ordered for the purposes of the rational 

* Wisdom, viii, 1. 



98 NOVISSIMA. 

and spiritual, and how all things were intended to 
glorify the common Creator. 

god's government understood. 

We who are tempted to murmur at the apparent 
triumph of wickedness over innocence, of evil over 
good, and error over truth, will then see the hidden 
reason of God's grand design. The whole course of 
His government, when the reign of His justice in 
heaven is taken into account, will appear like one 
magnificent and eternal harmony, in which the few 
discordant notes are made to enhance the general 
effect. 

In that supernal light, which not only imparts to 
the intellect a grasp and a penetration almost divine, 
but gives* to the eye of the glorified human body a 
power commensurate with that of the intellect, the 
entire frame of creation will be seen and known per- 
fectly in its dependence on the Creator. 

the universe seen and understood. 

The universe itself, from its centre to its furthest 
circumference, is intelligible to the mind, visible to 
the bodily sense. Even in our present condition, 
with the limited scope of our faculties, and the 
various obstacles which add to the difficulties of far- 
reaching bodily vision, the naked eye can see as far 
as the rays of light enable it to perceive objects — 
to the enormous distances where shine the stellar 
masses of the Milky Way, or the isolated suns 
around either pole. In the life to come, and the 
perfected or almost deiform condition of the soul, 

* Besides the glorified Body of our Lord, that of His Blessed Mother, 
according to the Eastern and Western Churches, enjoys the bliss of 
heaven. 



NOVISSIMA. 99 

no sucli obstacles will interfere to prevent the full- 
ness of knowledge, the unlimited range of the intel- 
lectual and the bodily vision. "The immeasurable 
circuit of the universe/' says Lessius, "is to them 
only what a basilica or a hall would be, because of 
their gift of celerity." So, the spirit-like independ- 
ence of distances is added to their supernatural gift 
of vision and knowledge. 

THE NATURE OF ALL THINGS PENETRATED. 

Xot only that, but their knowledge embraces the 
nature, constitution and properties of all created 
things — spiritual as well as material. The mind, 
the eye of the blessed, may thus be said to render 
them present to all that exists. For their contem- 
plation and knowledge of all and each are those of 
one who sees a thing as if he were present and 
looking into its very substance. Thus does God 
communicate to His friends in the other life His 
own attributes of omniscience and omnipresence, in 
so far as finite beings are susceptible of them. * 

And so we may rest both mind and heart for the 
moment from the contemplation of all that glory. 

Ah! Father, whose greatness is above all praise, 
whose love exceeds all thought of ours, it were 
enough, in order to make heaven the paradise of all 
delight and joy, to be evermore near Thee, to feel 
that Thou art our possession, all our own, and that 
nothing can separate us from Thee! 

*It is clear that, no matter to what height the faculties of angel or 
man are raised by " the light of glory," or how vastly the sphere of 
their knowledge is enlarged, the angelic as well as the human intellect 
must ever remain finite in its nature and limited in its grasp. Clearly 
and fully as they see the divine Essence, their vision and knowledge of 
the same cannot he, like that of the divine Intellect, infinite and " com- 
prehensive." Even so, as God cannot exhaust His creative power by 
producing a work or a single being in any sense infinite, the intellect of 
the blessed, outside of the Beatific Vision, can be exercised only on a 
finite and limited object. 



100 NOVISSIMA. 



CHAPTER VII. 



I. 

CHRIST AND HIS HUMAN KINGDOM. 



"Then shall the just shine as the sun, in the kingdom of 
their Father."—^. MaWiew, xiii, 43. 

THE IMMENSE FIELDS OPENED OUT FOE ACTIVITY 
IN HEAVEN. 

The most prevalent notions about the bliss of the 
life to come would have it to consist in perpetual 
repose and contemplation. It is true, that the divine 
Object so clearly seen there never departs from the 
mind. Even now the angels of every order and de- 
gree, who are employed in ministering on earth to 
the various needs of the human race, or whom the 
Ruler of the Universe sends to govern in His place 
the worlds which float around in immensity, never 
lose that Beatific Vision. The clear sight of the 
Godhead follows these mighty spirits at the remotest 
point of creation, and fills them with the same rap- 
ture as if they stood by the throne of Christ in that 
particular portion of the heavens where He reigns 
with His elect, and where the sacred Trinity mani- 
fest Their glory more fully to the angelic hosts and 



NOVISSIMA. 101 

the multitude of the blessed. The clear sight of 
God is never withdrawn from those to whom it has 
once been vouchsafed. When we come to speak 
in detail of the angelic world, this truth shall be 
explained more fully. 

THE BEATIFIC VISION ENJOYED THROUGHOUT THE 
HEAVENLY WORLDS. 

We mention here what reason enlightened by faith 
can readily perceive and understand, that whether 
Saints or angels stand ministering around the throne 
of God and His Christ in heaven, or are sent to the 
uttermost limits of the universe on some special 
mission, that divine countenance follows them every- 
where, and they gaze upon it continually while most 
actively busied in fulfilling their ministry toward 
mankind or regulating the inferior world. 

The highest, the primal and essential source of 
heavenly beatitude is the clear sight of the Godhead, 
the rapture and joy which it begets. But, as we 
have already hinted more than once, the secondary 
source of bliss consists in the knowledge, love and 
companionship of the glorious society of heaven, of 
Christ and His Saints, and the angelic world who, 
with the Saints, form one Church Triumphant under 
Christ, their Head. 

Here, again, comes to our mind the pregnant 
meaning of the oft-quoted words of the Lord : 

" This is eternal life, that they may know Thee, 
and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.' 7 

It is not merely the clear knowledge conveyed to 
the soul by the Beatific Vision of the Mystery of the 
Incarnation, and of the entire order of God's provi- 
dence in connection therewith, that is such a source 



102 XOYISSLMA. 

of deep joy; it is also, and more than that, the 
personal friendship of that same Christ Jesus, His 
companionship and conversation, as "well as the 
mutual friendship, companionship and intercourse of 
the glorious human and angelic worlds who, in 
heaven, unite to call Him King and Lord. 

THE GLORIOUS SOCIETY OF THIS EMPIRE A SOURCE 
OF SECONDARY BLISS. 

Can we realize in thought what it is to enjoy that 
unspeakably blissful and bliss-bestowing society of 
the heavenly kingdom ? Everything in the study of 
this sublime and fertile subject reminds one of the 
fruitless attempts made by hardy adventurers to 
scale the loftiest summits of such mountain chains as 
the Himalayas. One, after traveling thousands of 
miles from the seashore, and traversing the ever- 
ascending upland plains which lead to the foot- 
hills of the great mountain masses, is confronted 
with majestic, snow-clad summits, surpassing Mont 
Blanc in elevation ; and these great heights overcome, 
others stand out distinctly against the dark blue sky 
which seem as high again. Vainly have the boldest 
and most experienced attempted to assail these unap- 
proachable heights. Human strength and endurance 
give way long ere the shining crests, lost in the 
cloudless air, have been reached. 

So is it with these heavenly subjects. One has 
only reached up midway along some one of those 
giddy heights, when, lo ! beyond it and above, rising, 
shining, rank upon rank, ascend the glorious objects 
of one's research and contemplation ! 

And yet we must not be disheartened by our 
failure to reach our aim. It is God's work we ara 



KOVISSIMA. 103 

endeavoring to accomplish for the good of souls and 
our own instruction. So, humbly trusting to His 
Holy Spirit for light and strength, we can contem- 
plate from afar the sublimities inaccessible to man 
while cumbered with this body of death. 

Let us divide, the better to aid our infirmity, the 
objects of our present study. Christ reigning with 
His elect naturally attracts our human sympathies. 
They form the first part of that blessed society, which 
is Christ's special kingdom. How vast, how won- 
derful in excellence, in holiness, in power, and in 
glory, are those uncounted millions who claim Him 
as their First Born of the dead, as their elder 
Brother and Saviour, we shall see presently. This is 
truly the human world of the heavens — magnificent 
world! The angelic world, wider still, with its 
incomparably superior numbers, composed of beings 
nearer to God in knowledge and power, will next 
engage our attention. 



CHRIST AND HIS ELECT. 



No language can convey even a dim notion of this 
assemblage of all that has ever existed on earth of 
most perfect and most holy men and women, with 
spotless and generous youth, and childhood trans- 
planted in its first flower of innocence and loveliness 
to the land of the living. St. John, in the Apoca- 
lypse, affords us but a confused and disconnected 
description of the society of " the just made perfect*" 
The truth, however, will grow on us, as we advance, 
calmly considering and weighing every authority we 
find in Scripture and theology. 



104 KOVISSIMA. 

THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 

We could only describe, in speaking of our Lord's 
dealing with men during His stay upon earth, how 
the Godhead concealed Itself in Him, manifesting Its 
power only by the miracles performed for the poor 
and suffering, or at the entreaty of those who had 
laid Him under some obligation of gratitude. Bat 
the human side of His character was continually 
displayed by a thousand acts of sweetest charity, 
compassion, mercy, and kindliness. 

In heaven, on the contrary, where all the grandeur 
and loveliness of both the divine and the human 
nature united in His Person shines forth revealed 
and is known thoroughly, the study of Christ must 
be to highest seraph and to highest Saint, to the 
Mother who bore Him as well as to the innocent 
children martyred at His birth in hatred of Him, a 
source of endless rapture. He is the crown of our 
nature, which, in Him, is deified and exalted to the 
throne of heaven. He is the most perfect of men as 
well as very God. He is our glory. As Man, He 
is the Master-piece of creation ; as the Eternal Word 
and Son, He is the Power which made all things, 
and the Wisdom which governs them. 



But what renders Him most dear to us are the 
human virtues which He practiced, the human quali- 
ties which made Him the most lovable and the most 
admirable of men. Who that has deeply studied 
the life of Christ from Nazareth and Bethlehem to 
the cross of Calvary and the rock on Mount Olivet, 
where a loving tradition still worships the very last 
foot-prints He left on our earth, but has been lost in 



tfOVISSIMA. 105 

wonder and gratitude for all the divinely human 
virtues, deeds, benefactions and teachings which have 
marked His pathway among men ? Even now, after 
nearly nineteen hundred years, the high and the lowly, 
the learned and the simple, continually flock from 
every shore to that Holy Land in which He was born 
and died. They lovingly trace every scene of recorded 
suffering, miracle, sermon, parable, and missionary 
labor, from Bethlehem to the sources of the Jordan, 
and from the Lake of Genesareth to the seashore of 
Chanaan. Everywhere they " worship where His 
feet have stood," they gather and treasure up in 
their heart of hearts the " sweet odor " He has left 
behind in city, and hamlet, and country-side ; on the 
mountain-top which beheld His night-long vigils and 
prayers; on the banks of Jordan, where He was 
baptized ; on the waves of Galilee which His blessed 
feet have pressed; until the eyes of their love-lit 
souls almost think they see Him — the gentle, "the 
meek and humble of heart," the divinely com- 
passionate and patient, the unwearied Shepherd of 
souls — once more lighting up the wilderness with 
His visible presence. Even the fourfold narrative 
of the Gospels only affords a colorless and imperfect 
outline of that character, whose grandeur, like that 
of the highest peak of the Himalaya, grows upon 
the devout student, till human strength fails long 
before he has had a far-off glimpse of the shining 
summit aloft in the heavens. Nevertheless, it is not 
the sublime displays of His power, nor the divine 
wisdom of His teaching, that move our souls so 
deeply and draw us to Him with such irresistible 
force, as the sweet human sympathies which betray 
the Son of the Virgin Mary, the Man born in a 



106 xovissnrA. 

rocky cave by the road-side, hunted, while yet a babe 
in arms, like a wild beast, through the mountains of 
Judea into Egypt, and compelled to hide, in the 
carpenter's shop at Nazareth, His quality, His mis- 
sion, and His growth in all the lovely virtues of 
boyhood and youth. It is when we behold Him, 
touched by the utter bereavement of the widow of 
Nairn, raising her only son to life, or weeping at the 
grave of that other only son and brother, Lazarus, 
or shedding tears of patriotic grief and bitter human 
sorrow over the near prospect of Jerusalem de- 
stroyed and His own nation almost annihilated, that 
one admires and adores the infinite mercy of the 
Godhead, compassionating, in human form, with the 
truest and deepest human tenderness, the ills which 
befall our humanity. >Ve know, then, that He is, in 
truth, God brought very near to us — our Emmanuel, 
our Saviour and Consoler. 

HOW WE SHALL KNOW HIM IX HEAVEN. 

Much, in every way, is the knowledge we obtain 
and the spiritual profit we gather from this study of 
the life of our Lord, as imperfectly described in the 
Gospels; much is the light, the comfort, that reward 
our following, in spirit, His footsteps all over the 
theatre of His earthly labors. But what can that 
knowledge be, or what that consolation, compared to 
the light and bliss which flood the soul admitted to 
His close and eternal companionship in the life to 
come ? 

The three chosen Disciples, who were privileged 
to witness His Transfiguration on the Mount, were 
dazzled overpowered and prostrated by the glory 
which burst from His bodily frame, like intolerable 



NOVISSIMA. 107 

light from a tropical sun at its rising. And yet He 
had not fought, single-handed, the dread battle with 
the humiliation and death of the cross; and His 
sacred Body had not put on the glory won by the 
agony in the Garden, the buffeting, the scourging, 
the crowning with thorns, and the Crucifixion. . . . 
Who can fathom these depths of shame and suffering, 
can estimate the glory of His Resurrection, and the 
splendor with which the Crucified shines on the 
throne of the heavens ? 

THE FLOWEE AND CROWN OF OUR HUMANITY. 

He is, as Man, exalted to the right hand of God, 
the crown and boast of our humanity, the divine 
flower into which the root of Jesse blossomed. If 
Peter, on the Mount, and gazing upward at His 
transformed appearance and at the ecstatic worship 
of Moses and Elias, could only murmur, in the 
excess of his bliss, "Lord, it is good for us to be 
here/ 7 let us also believe that it is good, even look- 
ing up from the plain and amid the bustle of the 
hurrying crowd, for us to dwell a while on these 
magnificences of Christian truth. Christ as Man, 
as well as Christ in His Godhead, is for angels and 
Saints a subject of ecstatic rapture, of never-ending 
gratitude and adoration. Of Him who, for our 
salvation, ran such a race of abasement and suffer- 
ing, the Saints in Paradise, like their brethren in 
exile upon earth, may well sing, as they meditate on 
what they owe Him and what He is in Himself: 

O videre Te ! amare Te ! 
Perenniter laudare Te! 

"0 to see Thee, to love Thee! 
Everlastingly to praise Thee!" 



108 XOVISSBIA, 

One of the most glorious disciples formed by the 
Seraphic Francis of Assisi — St. Bonaventure, called 
by the middle ages the " Seraphic Doctor" — thus 
vents his love for Christ Crucified : 

"Transpierce, O sweet Lord Jesus, the marrow 
and vitals of my soul with the delightful and most 
salutary wound of Thy love, with the flame of a 
true, steady, and holy apostolic charity ; so that my 
soul shall faint and melt away with the mere unceas- 
ing love and desire of Thee. Make me vearn and 
pine for Thy courts ; make me wish to be dissolved, 
and to be with Thee ! 

" Grant that my soul shall hunger for Thee, 
O Bread of Angels, O Food of Saintly Souls — for 
Thee, our daily Bread above all substance, pos- 
sessing all sweetness and savor, and all that can 
delight the taste. Thou on whom the angels ever 
seek to gaze, let my heart still hunger after Thee 
and feed upon Thee. Let all the depths of my 
being be filled with Thy sweetness. 

"Oh, let me ever thirst for Thee, Fount of Life, 
Fount of Wisdom and Knowledge, Fount of Light 
Eternal, Torrent of Rapturous Bliss, overflowing 
Abundance of the House of God. 

"Be Thou the object of my ambition; let me seek 
Thee and find Thee; ever tend toward Thee, and at 
length come to Thee. Let me study Thee, speak of 
Thee, and do all my actions in praise and honor of 
Thy Xante, with humility and prudence, with tender 
love and deep delight, with promptness and affec- 
tion, and with perseverance to the end. 

"And thus be Thou alone evermore my hope, my 
sole trust, my wealth, my happiness, my pleasure, 



NOVISSIMA. 109 

my joy, my repose and rest, my peace, my only 
delight, my fragrance, my savor, my food, my 
refreshment, my refuge, my helper, my wisdom, my 
portion, my possession, my treasure, on which my 
mind and my heart shall be firmly set and im- 
movably rooted forever." 

CHRIST OX EARTH AND IN HEAVEN INSEPARABLE 
FROM HIS PARENTS. 

In contemplating on the throne of heaven Him 
who is the Father of our souls and their Saviour, 
can we forget her who is His Mother, and who, as 
God's creature and a human being, is, after her Son, 
the most exalted and perfect of her kind? Protest- 
antism has too long refused, in its blind, un-Christian, 
and unreasonable prejudice, to render the Mother of 
the Redeemer the honor, reverence, and homage due 
to her quality, apart from the gratitude due to the 
noble Mother and the " strong woman" who con- 
sented to bring forth and rear her Babe in such 
hardship, privation, and peril, and to follow Him, 
unflinching, to the bitter agony and humiliation of 
the cross. 

But, even among Protestants, there are those who 
unite with the ancient Churches of the East and 
West in acknowledging the claims which Mary, the 
Mother of Christ, has to the filial love, respect and 
gratitude of the entire human race. To them, as to 
us, Jesus and His Mother Mary stand in heaven, 
side by side, as the Parents of us all — she, the 
Mother of the New Life, being the highest of His 
worshipers, the first to voice the praise and adoration 



110 KOVISSIHA. 

of His elect, the first to plead for the manifold 
necessities of Christ's family on earth. 

Soul, is it faith, or love, or hope, 
That lets rae see her standing up 
Where the light of the throne is bright ? 
Unto the left, unto the right, 
The cherubim arrayed, conjoint, 
. Float inward to a golden point, 
And from between the seraphim 
The glory issues for a hymn. 

These two, and the royal Joseph, who watched 
over them on earth, as over God's choicest treasures, 
were, assuredly, gentle, true and most delightful 
companions and friends to all who sought to know, 
to study, and to follow the Word Incarnate; most 
compassionate to all who, for body or spirit, stood 
in need of the divine Physician. We cannot separate 
these three while following Christ during the most 
attractive period of His mortal life — His infancy, 
boyhood, and youth. It is no idolatry, no injury to 
the God who gave them to our love and veneration, 
to pay them the homage of our grateful reverence, 
when we approach in spirit the cave in Bethlehem, 
their journeyings to Egypt and back, and the car- 
penter's shop at Nazareth. Shall we separate those 
who were called on earth, and are denominated in the 
Gospel, " the parents of Jesus," from Him who dis- 
dained not to be called their Son? Did not holy 
Anna and the no less holy Simeon, when Mary and 
Joseph brought Him for the first time to the Temple, 
pour forth their souls in rapturous thanksgiving, 
when the contact with the Incarnate God gave light 
to their minds to know Him, and fired their hearts 
with His love? 



HOVISSIMA. ill 

Who among us but would, at death's approach 
especially, not give worlds for the privilege of re- 
ceiving, from the arms of that Most Blessed Mother, 
the divine Babe, the Light of the Gentiles and the 
Glory of Israel? How gladly, like Simeon, would 
we depart from this world, with the assured hope of 
salvation in the next, repeating in our turn this 
hymn of the predestined: 

"Now Thou dost dismiss Thy servant, Lord, 
According to Thy word, in peace ! 
Because my eyes have seen Thy salvation, 
Which Thou hast prepared 
Before the face of all peoples : 
A light to the revelation of the Gentiles, 
And the glory of Thy people, Israel." * 

It is from that Mother the world ever receives 
Him who is the Light and the Life. What mother, 
what woman, can compare with her? 



CHAPTER VIII. 



among the multitudes of the blessed in 
Christ's human kingdom. 



"According to Thy Highness, Thou hast multiplied the chil- 
dren of men." — Psalm XI, 9. 

" Heaven and the heavens of heavens do not contain Thee." 
— 2 Paralip., vi, 18. 

II. 

Although we have only bestowed a timid and 
hasty glance on His excellence, majesty, and loveli- 

* St. Luke, ii, 29-32. 



112 XOYISSDJA. 

ness, who is "flesh of our flesh" as Man, and the 
life of our life as God, we can now turn our eyes to 
the radiant multitudes who fill the courts of our 
King — the First-Born from among the dead. Let 
us, if we can, count the millions there who, de- 
scended from Adam, can truly call Christ their 
Brother. Contemplate their ranks in spirit. There 
is not one there — not one — on whom rests the stain 
of moral guilt. Xothing undefiled can pass beyond 
the frontiers of that land of the living, or enter that 
Presence, or enjoy the Vision, in which essential 
holiness is possessed by the holy, or join that society 
of "the spirits of the just made perfect." 

THE COMPAXY OF THE TEUEST AXD THE BEST. 

Picture to yourself a company of all the men and 
women most distinguished in all the earth for their 
well-proven goodness, generosity, heroism of life, 
excellence in learning, as well as in the services 
rendered to their fellow-men; all persons the most 
admirable, the most lovable, the most ready to ren- 
der to every quality of every one of their brethren a 
just and willing tribute of praise; a company from 
which jealousy, envy, pride, and self-love are ban- 
ished, and where the thoughts and efforts of all are 
directed to secure the honor, comfort, and felicity of 
each. It would be such a happiness, such a reward, 
to spend one day in the week, or even one hour in 
the day, in communion of heart and mind with such 
a select and glorious society. Yes, one day occa- 
sionally spent in breathing the air they breathe, and 
in filling one's soul with a draught of goodness from 
their speech and their example, would lift one above 
the miseries of this life. 



2ST0VISSIMA. 113 

What, then, must it be to be one, and forever, of 
the most blessed company who surround the throne 
of the living God — to be united to every member 
of this immense and most glorious society by the 
ties of a friendship which js eternal and founded on 
the knowledge of merits crowned by God's own 
praise? No torture is more terrible to the noble of 
soul and pure of heart than to be condemned, by 
some freak of fortune, to associate with an assem- 
blage of the low-lived, the criminal, the degraded. 
This companionship with the fallen, the wicked, the 
vile, is one of the worst punishments inflicted in 
hell. 

THE FRIENDSHIP OF THE BEST AND TRUEST A FART 
OF HEAVENLY FELICITY. 

On the other hand, the companionship and life- 
long and everlasting friendship of the noblest, the 
purest, the best, must be a part of the felicity of 
heaven. In order, however, to have a just idea of 
the real greatness of the honor and happiness 
derived from this intercourse with the citizens of the 
heavenly kingdom, both men and angels, we ought 
to examine more closely to what a supreme degree 
of moral excellence all spirits are raised on entering 
upon the life eternal. For it is manifest that the 
happiness derived from all friendship depends upon 
the acknowledged goodness and greatness of the per- 
sons united by this sacred bond ; so that the most 
perfect friendship is between persons in every way 
exempt from selfishness and all vice, and, at the 
same time, endowed with the most exalted qualities 
of mind and heart — persons who, in loving each 
other, consider that all they have belong to their 
friends. 



114 HOVISSIMA. 

THE SUPREME PERFECTION OF MORAL NATUBE — 

WHENCE DEBITED . 

But what is this special perfection, this supreme 
excellence of both their intellectual and moral 
nature, to which man and angel necessarily attain in 
that life where all trial ends, where all merit is re- 
warded, all labor is succeeded by repose, and all the 
aspirations of the soul by perfect fulfillment ? 

Keligion teaches, and the light of reason in Chris- 
tian philosophy acquiesces in the teaching, that eter- 
nal life means final perfection for all created beings 
admitted to its enjoyment. 

It is a cardinal doctrine of Christian theology, that 
man only attains in the life to come the full perfec- 
tion of his nature, both in body and in soul; for the 
human personality is not the mere spiritual element, 
but the material organization as well, which forms a 
part of his being in this life — labors, suffers, and 
enjoys with him — and must, to constitute his perfect 
felicity and the completeness of his being, be united 
to the soul in the future existence. 

Of course, the resurrection of the body, of which 
we shall treat fully before the end of this volume, is 
a supernatural fact expressly revealed by Christ. 
His Resurrection is the type and the pledge of ours. 
The felicity and the glory which He, as Man, enjoys 
in heaven are to be shared by every child of Adam 
admitted into the life eternal. AVe shall differ from 
Him only in degree, and in the essential distinction 
which His union with the Divinity establishes, and 
the wide gulf it opens between the Man-God and the 
most exalted and perfect of creatures. 



KOVISSIMA. 115 

TRANSFORMATION OF THE JUST AFTER DEATH. 

We can help ourselves toward some conception of 
the mighty change which takes place in the whole 
nature of man after death, and when raised to the 
height of the Beatific Vision. For the moment and 
the purpose of our argument, we speak of the 
blessed as they will be after the resurrection. 

ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE TREES OF THE FOREST. 

Look at the mightiest trees in the forest. There 
are some to which, on a careful examination of their 
structure, and from a thorough knowledge of the 
laws which regulate their growth, naturalists grant a 
thousand or even twelve hundred years of existence. 
But even the mightiest of these giants of the vege- 
table world, which have outlived empires and 
peoples, are developed from a tiny fruit or germ. 
From the acorn springs the oak; from a seedling 
one-fifth the size of an acorn proceeds the pine, the 
yew tree, the prodigious trunks of the Californian 
Wellingtonia. If one were gifted with an angelic 
intellect, able to pierce the organic envelope of the 
tree germ, even before the blossom on the branch 
opens to the sun, and what is to be the future tree — 
the pride of hillside or Alpine valley — begins its life 
of one thousand or two thousand years, doubtless 
one might discern there the principles of that long 
life and sturdy strength unfolding themselves. The 
flower is transformed into the fruit — into the acorn ; 
and this, cast on the earth, in due time, aided by the 
vital warmth and moisture furnished by the elements, 
will burst its woody shell, and send its tender roots 
into the ground, and put forth its first seed leaves 



116 NOVISSIMA. 

toward the sun. It is but a tiny, helpless thing, 
which the foot of the passer-by or the ravages of a 
little insect may destroy in this first stage of its 
growth. Come back after a few summers and you 
will find a sappling; and the sappling slowly shoots 
up into the tree capable of battling with and defying 
all the force of the storm. 

ILLUSTRATED BY THE STAGES OF HUMAN EXISTENCE 
ITSELF. 

It is a marvelously instructive study. But how 
much more so is that of human existence in its 
three stages : Before birth ; through all the dangers, 
trials, and battles of infancy, childhood, youth, and 
perfect manhood, till death closes the extremest 
period of old age ; and then beyond the grave. The 
dark, blind, helpless, vegetative period before birth 
bears, to that which follows between birth and the 
grave, the same proportion, in the development of 
all the energies and aspirations of rational life, as 
this second stage itself bears to the eternal future. 
It is the cry, the complaint, of the ilite of our race, 
that even the longest human life is too short for the 
acquisition of knowledge, or the accomplishment of 
the generous labors which the good and the great 
have begun for the benefit of their kind. AVe can 
bring no great work to perfection within the brief 
span of our present existence. Small is the sum of 
science which the most long-lived student can 
acquire, since, as he grows older, he only perceives 
more clearly how little he has learned, and to him 
the horizons of knowledge stretch out into infinity. 
So is it with those who have toiled to reach the 
heights of sanctity. A life of self-sacrifice and 



HOVISSIMA. 117 

devotion to others only discloses heights of moral 
perfection far above their ken, toward which their 
soul aspires, and vast regions upon earth where 
peoples who know not God cry out in darkness and 
from the depths of moral misery for the voice and 
hand of an Apostle. 

THIS LIFE ALL TOO SHORT FOR THE EARNEST 
WORKER. 

We say it ourselves every day, that life is all too 
short for the zeal of the earnest, the serious-minded, 
the true-hearted. And yet we all have aspirations, 
yearnings, hopes, tendencies, and a thirst for the 
infinite and everlasting, which suppose that there is 
in the unknown future a period of perfection, fulfill- 
ment, satiety, and complete satisfaction for all that 
is divinest in the sentiments and conceptions of man. 

Let us believe it, then : " God, who commanded 
the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in 
our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the 
glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus. . . We 
are cast down, but we perish not : always bearing 
about in our body the mortification of Jesus, that 
the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our 
mortal flesh. . . Knowing that He who raised 
up Jesus will raise up us also with Jesus, and place 
us with you. . . For which cause we faint not: 
but though our outward man is corrupted [i. e., 
decayed] : yet the inward man is renewed day by 
day. For that which is at present momentary and 
light of our tribulation worketh for us above 
measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory. 
While we look not at the things which are seen, but 
at the things which are not seen. For the things 



118 KOVISSIMA. 

which are seen are temporal : but the things which 
are not seen are eternal. For we know, if our 
earthly house of this habitation be dissolved, that 
we have a building of God, a house not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this also we 
groan, desiring to be clothed upon with our habita- 
tion that is from heaven. . . . Xow He, that 
maketh us for this very thing, is God, who hath 
given us the pledge of the Spirit." * 

WHAT AVE AEE MADE FOE. 

Such are the thoughts, desires, anticipations, with 
which the Christian soul is moved as life advances 
and the end draws near. They are the merciful 
touches of that Creator-Spirit who "maketh us for 
this very thing," this " eternal weight of glory," this 
incorruption and immortality with which we, the 
predestined heirs to all this glory, yearn unceasingly. 
The converted Corinthians, to whom St. Paul taught 
so sublime and elevating a doctrine, needed its les- 
sons, and the promises they held forth, to rise supe- 
rior to the frightful corruption that surrounded 
them; to worship the God of holiness with pure 
hearts and life unblemished amid the sensual idol- 
atry of that infamous land; and to resist the perse- 
cutions let loose against the new faith. What cared 
they for "the momentary and light tribulation," 
which was the lot of the Christian, when they looked 
forward to the fruit of tribulation, that "eternal 
weight of glory," exceeding all measure of human 
suffering and present merit? 

*2 Cor., iv, 6-18; v, 1-5. 



NOVISSIMA. 119 

THIS TRANSFORMATION, OR GROWTH, IS VITAL AND 
FROM WITHIN. 

\Ye must not, however, consider that this trans- 
formation of the present embryo or infant-like state 
of man into that truly Godlike excellence, perfec- 
tion, and grandeur of the eternal beatitude, is a 
something merely external to the soul itself. A 
child may be allowed to disport itself in the loveliest 
of gardens, reveling in its delights, while still 
remaining a child in mind, and stature, and disposi- 
tion. Or it may be taken into the most magnificent 
of courts, and behold all the splendor of the apart- 
ments, and varied greatness of king and courtiers; 
and, on returning to its home, all that it has seen 
will be only a memory, leaving the child what it 
was before. 

Such is not the change wrought in the blessed by 
the Holy Spirit when they enter into the joy of their 
Lord. Between the highest knowledge and the 
highest sanctity reached by the soul before death, 
and the perfection of mind and heart wrought by 
the clear sight of God in glory and the fruition of 
that most blissful Presence, there is an infinite dis- 
tance. How can we measure or understand it? 

HOW WE CAN ESTIMATE THIS MIGHTY GROWTH. 

We who have lived long enough have known men 
and women to grow from dull and uninteresting 
childhood to the highest degree of mental culture, of 
social distinction, of moral greatness, and loveliness. 
It was the development of the obscure, invisible 
germ of excellence to its bright flower in spring- 
tide and its glorious fruit in the autumn of life. 
But, in very truth, the ripest knowledge here below 



120 SFOVISSIMA, 

and the rarest goodness and holiness of life are but 
the flower and the promise of that supernal excel- 
lence seen and possessed only in the land of the 
living;. 

o 

St. Paul, who was running himself the race of 
suffering, with his cruel death ever in view, needed 
to keep his own eyes steadily fixed on the glories of 
that everlasting kingdom. Fourteen years before he 
wrote the words we quoted several paragraphs back, 
he had been "rapt even to the third heaven — caught 
up into paradise. " The words that he had heard 
there he dared not to utter to mortal ear. But the 
rapturous vision disclosed to him illuminates his 
Epistles with the light descending from beyond sun 
and stars. "You are our epistle," he says to these 
Corinthians, most of them, probably, of Hebrew 
parentage, — "you are our epistle, written in our 
hearts, . . known and read by all men. . . . 
You are the epistle of Christ, ministered by us, and 
written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the 
living God." * And comparing the conduct of the 
Israelites of old, who forced Moses to veil his 
countenance, with these fervent disciples, who only 
sought to know and to imitate Christ, he uses these 
wonderful words : " Xow, the Lord is a Spirit : and 
where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 
But we all beholding the glory of the Lord with 
open face, are transformed into the same image from 
glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord." f 

As if the study of the Gospel truth, and the 
fervent following in the footsteps of the Master, 
wrought such fruit in the lives and souls of these 
men and women that it seemed the Spirit of God 

*2 Cor., iii, 2-3. tlijidem, iii, 17-18. 



KOYISSIMA. 121 

carried them forward from height to height of per- 
fection, eifecting here below in them a lively image 
of the transformation wrought in heaven by the 
Beatific Vision. 

COMMUNITIES OX EARTH THE IMAGES OF THE 
HEAVENLY. 

There are on earth, at the end of this nineteenth 
century, communities of men and women among 
whom one seems to breathe the air of paradise; 
where somewhat of its light rests upon every face; 
where the chance wayfarer comes of a sudden into 
the shadow of the peace that is not of earth; where 
the language one hears belongs to another sphere; 
and a something goes out from the dwellers therein 
which pierces the soul, as with a ray of light, or 
with that dart of fire the angel sent through the 
kindred heart of Stanislaus Kostka. 

What, then, must it be to be with Christ and His 
Saints in glory? With Christ and His Saints! 



CHAPTER IX. 



LOST AMONG THE HUMAN WORLD OF HEAVEN. 



" Israel, how great is the house of God, and how vast is the 
place of His possession ! It is great, and hath no end : it is 
high and immense ! " — Baruch, iii, 24-25. 

"Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to 
dwell together in unity." — Psalm C XXXII, 1. 

"lord, it is good for us to be here!" 

St. Peter, speaking in the name of his two com- 
panions amid the glories of the Mount of Trans- 
figuration, could only express the rapture they felt 



122 NOVISSIMA. 

by the simple words, "Lord, it is good for us to be 
here ! " And yet only two of the great figures of 
the Old Testament, Moses and Elias, formed the 
company of the Redeemer. Nevertheless, such was 
the overwhelming sense of blissfulness caused by 
Christ's allowing the light of His concealed divinity 
to burst forth for a moment, flooding His own per- 
son and those of His two great servants, that the 
place became heaven to the three favored Apostles. 
"Lord," Peter goes on to say, "let us make here 
three tents — one for Thee, and one for Moses, and 
one for Elias." St. Mark adds, in relating the 
words of Peter: "He knew not what he said," 
being beside himself from mingled happiness and 
awe. What, then, must be the intoxicating effect of 
beholding, no longer with the weak eyes of their 
mortal flesh, but with the eyes of our transfigured 
body, those shining multitudes of the blessed, whose 
head is Christ, mixed up with the myriads of angels, 
all forming around the enthroned Incarnate Son a 
living world so glorious and so vast that it requires 
the transformed senses of the other life to seize both 
the intensity of their glory and the incredible extent 
of their numbers! O kingdom of the living God, 
who can by thought or imagination reach thy fron- 
tiers round about, or conceive of thy splendors, or 
tell of thy riches and of the numbers and felicity of 
thine inhabitants! 

THE FRIENDS WE SHALL HAVE IN HEAVEN. 

We call them most happy here below who, pos- 
sessed of vast domains and boundless wealth, sur- 
round themselves with the friends of their choice in 
endless succession, entertaining them with all the 



KOVISSIMA. 123 

pleasures that money can purchase and human inge- 
nuity devise. Their felicity is. amid their own 
broad lands and in their princely abodes, to dispense 
unlimited hospitality, and hear their own praises 
sounded by the men and women on whom they 
lavish magnificent entertainments. 

But in heaven, the least portion of the happiness 
of God's friends is the assurance that this kingdom, 
with its riches and glory, is all their own; that 
theirs is the sweet society of that infinite multitude 
of sainted men and women and glorified spirits ; but 
that God Himself is all their own. To the man who 
has, for a great portion of his life, been condemned 
to wander homeless over the earth, to depend for his 
subsistence on his own labor, and for his happiness 
on the uncertain favor of strangers and the incon- 
stancy of fortune, there is unspeakable joy to find 
himself suddenly in possession of broad acres he 
can call his property, with a mansion worthy to be 
his home, and wealth sufficient to banish all fears of 
future need. 

BECOME POOR TO GAIN HEAVEN. 

How many souls, since Christ was born, lived, 
and died in voluntary poverty, have forsaken broad 
lands, wealth, home, friends, and country itself, to 
cast their lot with Christ — to become one of those of 
whom He said : " Blessed are the poor in spirit, for 
theirs is the kingdom of heaven!" How paltry 
these right royal souls deem the price they pay for 
that kingdom, when they first set their foot on the 
land of the living, and feel that it is their own, all 
their own, in its length and its breadth, with its 
wealth and its glory, its loving hosts of true friends, 



124 HOVISSIMA. 

and the God who made it as their crowning posses- 
sion so long as eternity endures! 

THE BLISSFUL INTERCOURSE OF THAT KINGDOM. 

What are the pleasures of a passing acquaintance, 
with the noblest, most cultivated, and most virtuous 
society in marble halls, enchanted gardens, or 
grounds resembling Eden in its bloom, compared 
with the honor, the joy, the felicity, of mixing ever- 
more with the company of Christ and His friends, 
where the minds of one and all are so elevated, 
illumined, and enlarged, that they take in, by intu- 
ition, ail the divine perfections, all the natural and 
supernatural excellences of Saints and angels, and 
all the marvels of God's wondrous works through- 
out creation? Drinking evermore full draughts of 
knowledge and love at the fount of the divine 
Essence, each spirit there pours out its love and 
admiration on all the members of that blessed com- 
pany, whom God has made so good and great, and 
in loving whom it loves the Giver of all good gifts. 

THE SWEET AND HOLY TIES OF EARTH NOT DIS- 
SOLVED IN HEAVEN. 

~Ror must we forget for a moment that, once we 
join that heavenly society, the ties which on earth 
bound us to kindred, friends, and neighbors, are not 
dissolved forever, so that among the citizens of 
that kingdom we only meet new faces, or find no 
happiness from association with our own. There is 
not a tie formed by nature here below between our 
souls and the souls of others that will not subsist, 
strengthened, hallowed, and perpetuated in eternity, 
provided that we shall have respected these ties 



2ST0VISSIMA. 125 

ourselves in this life, and hallowed them by making 
of them means of benefiting or sanctifying the dear 
ones thus connected with us. 

THOSE WHO THERE SHINE LIKE STAES. 

It will repay us well to pause awhile on this truth, 
as on a rich mine of instruction and comfort. Cer- 
tain it is, that persons who, on earth, have been to 
those of their own household, by word and example, 
a cause of edification — who have exhorted and 
encouraged children and servants to be, like them- 
selves, true children of God — shall, in heaven, have 
children and servants around them, as so many 
jewels in their crown of merit. 

THE MARTYR-MOTHER OF THE MACHABEES. 

Who can imagine that the mother of the Macha- 
bees is separated, amid the great army of martyrs 
on high, from the seven heroic sons whom she 
beheld most cruelly tortured in Antioch, suffering 
in her inmost soul every pang inflicted on her boys, 
till the youngest had won his palm, and then her 
own turn came to be tortured and to triumph? 
What praise must everlastingly be hers as she moves 
with her glorious offspring through these crowned 
battalions of God's witnesses ! And Mathathias, the 
priest, with his Godlike progeny, the champions of 
faith and country, of religious freedom and political 
independence, who made the name of Machabee as 
glorious in Judea as that mother and her offspring 
had made it in the Syrian capital — do they not 
triumph together with God in heaven, as they fought 
together for God in the land of their fathers? 



126 NOVISSIMA. 

NOE THE JUST, OUE SECOND PARENT. 

Looking farther back in the ages, I remember that 
other parent of our race, Noe, and remember how 
he and his were true to the living God among the 
gigantic vices and crimes of^a lost world. They 
alone were saved from the universal destruction. 
What, though one son and his progeny may have 
proved unworthy of such a parent, shall Noe not 
behold around him in the land of the living myriads 
to whom he transmitted the promise and the undying 
faith in its fulfillment? Is not the promised One 
descended from that blessed seed saved in the Ark? 
Did not Abraham and Sarah inherit Noe's faith with 
his blood? And what a galaxy of holy, heroic souls 
surround every one of these sublime patriarchs, who 
kept the faith in spite of the incredible seductions of 
an idolatry of which we of the nineteenth Christian 
century can only form a very dim notion ; who pre- 
served their souls and their lives from the stain 
of the frightful moral corruption of Chaldea, and 
Canaan, and Egypt! 

THE FAITHFUL GENERATIONS BEFORE CHRIST. 

Eecall to mind, both before and after Christ, the 
generations of heroic believers, among whom 
"Women received their dead raised to life again: 
but others were racked, not accepting deliverance, 
that they might expect a better resurrection; and 
others had trial of mockeries and stripes, moreover 
also of bonds and prisons: they were stoned, they 
were cut asunder, they were tempted, they were put 
to death by the sword, they wandered about in sheep- 
skins, in goat-skins, being in want, distressed, 
afflicted: of whom the world was not worthy: 



NOVISSIMA. 127 

wandering in deserts, in mountains, and in dens, and 
in caves of the earth." * 

THE CHRISTIAN HEBREWS, PARENTS OF CHRIS- 
TENDOM. 

St. Paul wrote this of the ancient Hebrews. How 
many in his own days sealed with their blood their 
testimony to Jesus Christ! How many more — a 
fact we ungratefully overlook — labored successfully 
to bear His name to the remotest corners of 
the then known world ! Remember the holy house- 
holds Paul, and Peter, and their fellow-apostles met 
with everywhere, to whom they brought the light of 
the faith, and who spread it so zealously on every 
shore. The Acts and Epistles of the Apostles 
mention many — a few only, however, of the multi- 
tude — of these blessed families, whose men and 
women, sons and daughters, were among the glorious 
parents of the early Church — the parents, in truth, 
of our Christendom ! Shall none of those whom they 
were instrumental in giving to God, and in making 
worthy of Him, surround their benefactors in 
heaven? All through the history of God's revealed 
religion we read of fathers and mothers rearing 
their offspring in the fear of the Lord, and walking 
before them in the paths of generous and heroic 
performance of the service due to the divine Majesty. 
When Christendom counted within its pale all the 
nations of the civilized world, every Christian people 
possessed saintly homes innumerable. To the edu- 
cation and the examples given there, to the heroic 
blood thus inherited, we owe it that, amid the wreck 
of former institutions, there subsist in the most 

* Hebrews, xi, 35-38. 



128 KOVISSIMA. 

afflicted lands the traditional Christian virtues which 
are the seed of a future more glorious than the 
world has yet seen. 

Writing these lines in the land most tried of any 
for religion's sake — among a people to whom, during 
centuries, the words just quoted from St. Paul could 
be spoken of every generation; a people beaten and 
ground in the mortar, exterminated, exiled, despoiled; 
the sad remnant oppressed by a tyranny so fearful 
that it seems inconceivable to any not born on the 
soil, and their home-life broken up by enforced 
emigration — yet the heroic faith and sublime en- 
durance of fathers and mothers have fostered the 
germs of life; and these germs are, to-day, under 
God and for His Church, the hope of the world. 

MODEEN PEOPLES WHO HAVE KEPT THE FAITH. 

Shall such fathers and mothers have no special 
glory from the company, the praise, the love, of 
their faithful children in the land of the living ? 

How many such families and such noble parents 
do we not all know ? How many fathers to whose 
lives we can apply literally the words of the Apostle : 
"By faith he abode in the land; for he looked for a 
city that hath foundations : whose builder and maker 
is God." And again : "All these died according 
to faith, not having received the promises, but be- 
holding them, afar off, and saluting them, and con- 
fessing that they arc pilgrims and strangers on the 
earth. For they that say these things, do signify 
that they seek a country. . . . But now they 
desire a better, that is to say, a heavenly country. 
Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their 
God : for He hath prepared for them a city." * 

* Hebrews, xi, 9-16. 



NOVISSIMA. 129 

They possess now that country, and that God-built 
city, where their " Women received their dead raised 
to life again," 

HONOR PAID IN HEAVEN TO THE PARENTS OF 
THE SAINTS. 

It is related in authentic history that when the 
tidings reached Portugal, in 1693, that the heroic 
John de Britto had been — like his namesake, John 
the Baptist — beheaded by the King of Marava, 
because he would not sanction an adulterous con- 
nection contrary to the holy laws of matrimony, the 
martyr's mother, who was then at the Portuguese 
court, was forced by the queen to be seated on the 
royal throne, and, during three days in succession, to 
receive the homage of the royal family and the nobles 
of the kingdom. Such is the honor Christian senti- 
ment pays to the mothers of Christ's glorious 
servants. Do we not perceive that, had the noble 
lady been in heaven, the entire "army of martyrs" 
and all the Saints of God would have congratulated 
and blessed her for having reared such a son ? 

THE RELATIONS OF HOME AND COUNTRY IN THE 
LAND OF THE LIVING. 

The sweet relations of home and country are not 
ignored in the life to come; the holy affections of 
home and kindred are not buried with us in the 
grave. Purified from all earthly dross, exalted, and 
perfected, conjugal, parental and filial love forms no 
small element of the happiness enjoyed by the 
Saints. But in all the new relations into which the 
soul enters on becoming a member of the heavenly 
city, as in all that constitutes its life, the divine 



130 KOVISSIMA. 

"Will so regulates all others, the union of all human 
hearts there is so close with that of Christ, their 
Model and the Fountain of all Grace, that the perfect 
and ecstatic love of God only fills every citizen there 
with a more ardent and holy love for everybody and 
everything dear to God. 



STILL LOST AMONG THE MULTITUDES OF TEE 
BLESSED. 



As we proceed with our great subject, it will be 
more and more apparent that we need not restrain 
our imagination while picturing to ourselves the 
various features of greatness, vastness, and magnifi- 
cence which are proper to that city of God — the 
masterpiece of the divine Love and Power. The 
felicity enjoyed there, the social condition of that 
everlasting kingdom, the fact that the Author of all 
things there bestows Himself, known in His essence 
and possessed in His infinite loveliness, as the reward 
of His faithful servants, as the crowning glory of all 
His works — all this argues that everything, spiritual 
and material, in that final order shall be on a scale 
of perfection and immensity corresponding to the 
completion of God's designs. 

We have spoken coldly of Christ reigning in 
glory, surrounded by His redeemed. What is, at 
present — what shall be, when the last child of Adam 
and Eve is added to them — their real numbers? 

ESTIMATE OF THE NUMBER OF THE TRULY 
FAITHFUL. 

We can only form conjectures. It is corrputed 
that the human race, as it is to-day, counts some one 



KOVISSIMA. 131 

thousand millions of individuals. This number is 
renewed at least twice in a century. Of these 
millions, those alone, according to Catholic doctrine, 
have a right to the supernatural beatitude, won for 
the race by the Blood of Jesus Christ, who have 
become, by baptism, members of His mystic body, 
the Church; and of the members of the Church 
none can make good their right but such as die in 
the charity of Christ, unstained by mortal guilt. 



He, our own loving and merciful Redeemer, speaks 
of the road which leads to that supernatural heaven 
as "the narrow road," and of those who follow it 
to the end as "few indeed" comparatively. As we, 
His professed disciples, look around us, remembering 
how high is the standard of virtue set up by the 
Gospel, we are continually saddened by the contra- 
diction we behold among Christians, between their 
profession and their practice. How many, even 
among those who are the guides, and should be the 
models, of the multitude fall beneath the level of 
natural generosity in aim and deed, not to speak of 
that supernatural ideal which shines forth in the life 
of Christ, and which His Saints, in every age, made 
the object of their fervent imitation! To all pro- 
fessed Christians who disgrace their faith by their 
practice, who nurse themselves into the hope that all 
shall be well with them in the end, or that aims, 
words, and deeds, and a whole life beneath the 
standard of good pagan morality, shall be crowned 
by the reward of a supernatural heaven, we recom- 
mend the calm and serious perusal of Christ's words 
in St. Luke, xiii, 22-30. 



132 NOVISSIMA. 

"blessed are the poor!" .•-;•; 

Still, among the faithful of the poor and laboring 
classes, in countries we need not name, how much of 
heroic piety and Godlike virtue one may find without 
searching far ? We repeat, though for another pur- 
pose, what we said above : In the ancient land, where 
Ave are writing, the very atmosphere is impregnated 
with the fragrance of the Christian virtues exhaled 
from the homes and lives of these toiling, suffering, 
oppressed masses. It is like a lonely Alpine valley 
in full springtide, when meadows and hill-slopes are 
all aglow with the glory of innumerable flowers of 
the field, when swarms of bees are reveling in their 
sweets, and the very air is loaded with their mingled 
perfumes. And how many households are there of 
the middle and upper classes in every land, in which 
the lives of parents and children are in strictest con- 
formity to the dictates of conscience! We have 
known so many, so many who, true to the light 
given them, seemed incapable in practice of doing 
what they deemed to be wrong ! And knowing this, 
we remember with fear and trembling the words of 
the Master: "Whosoever doth not carry his cross 
and come after Me, cannot be My disciple." Or 
again: "Strive to enter by the narrow gate: for 
many, I say to you, shall seek to enter, and shall not 
be able. But when the Master of the house shall be 
gone in, and shall shut to the door, you shall begin to 
stand without, and knock at the door, saying : < Lord, 
open to us ! ' And He, answering, shall say to you : 
'I know you not whence you are. 7 Then you shall 
begin to say: 'We have eaten and drunk in Thy 
presence, and Thou hast taught in our streets/ 



NOVISSIMA. 133 

And He shall say to you : * I know you not. . . . 
Depart from Me all ye workers of iniquity!/" * 

DID XOT CHRIST SPEAK LITERALLY OF THE JEWS 
IN HIS DAY? 

It is a terrible lesson. But it is the retribution 
which awaits the neglect to profit by the golden 
opportunities of the present life, and thereby pur- 
chase the eternal reward we have been foreshadow- 
ing. It is the just punishment of the perverse 
use of God's best gifts, of the frustration of His 
most merciful designs, of His most fatherly and 
loving providence over us. 

At the end of the same chapter the great heart of 
the Redeemer gives vent to the bitter grief that fills 
it at the prospect of the desolation of His native 
land, the extermination of its people, and the ruin 
of that beautiful capital. "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 
that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are 
sent to thee, how often would I have gathered thy 
children, as the bird doth her brood under her 
wings, and thou wouldest not ! " 

Oh ! the mystery and the wonder of that Infinite 
Love which, ever since that day, has been seeking to 
gather the children of the Church and all the race 
of mankind through the Church under Its wings in 
that secure and everlasting peace of the heavenly 
city! 

While the sword of Titus was drinking the blood 
of more than a million of Hebrews, and the City of 
the Great Sacrifice was razed to its foundations, 
thousands of that chosen race were spreading the 
religion of Christ throughout the Roman Empire, 
and laying the solid foundations of that Church 

* St. Luke, xiii, 24-27. 



134 NOVISSIMA. 

which is on earth the nursery of saints for heaven. 
How many millions of her children has this spouse 
of Christ sent to join Him in heaven during the 
nineteen centuries, well nigh, of her existence? No 
one has revealed to us. But suppose their number 
to be equal to that of the inhabitants of the earth at 
this day — one thousand millions — and then allow 
your imagination to range over the glorious ranks of 
this immense multitude. 

MAY WE COMPUTE THE SAINTS IN HEAVEN TO- 
DAY AT ONE THOUSAND MILLIONS? 

We are only endeavoring, with the light of faith, 
and beneath the eye of God, to attain to some 
approximation to the sublime reality. One thousand 
millions of sainted human spirits forming around 
Christ, the Man-God, the Saviour, a living crown of 
glory in His kingdom ! Let us suppose that all the 
nations of the earth, at the present moment, were 
civilized and at peace with each other; that steam 
and electricity had made traveling by sea and land 
incomparably more safe and easy than it is at present, 
and that telegraphy enabled thought to travel with 
the speed of light from people to people and man to 
man. Suppose, moreover, that Christianity was at 
the beginning of that era long hoped for, when the 
errors and follies of materialism, socialism, and a 
false science, had had their reign and passed away, 
and the whole race of man were prepared for the 
reception of the Gospel truth, how enthusiastically 
would the young, the Avealthy, the learned, and the 
religious-minded, undertake to visit every land, and 
study and benefit every tribe of earth! Even for 
the mere purposes of science or recreation a voyage 



KOVISSIMA. 135 

anions; these one thousand millions of our fellow- 
men, undertaken and accomplished under the cir- 
cumstances described, would nobly fill up a life-time. 

THE FELICITY OF SOCIAL INTERCOURSE WITH SUCH 
A WORLD. 

What, then, shall we say of that world beyond 
the stars, which the Almighty Creator has made for 
His elect, and where He has gathered under the 
wings of His love, amid the most perfect of all His 
works, the most saintly, the most noble of the race 
of man. 

There each citizen of God's own kingdom delights 
to visit, honored and honoring, blessed and praised, 
praising and blessing in return, all these happy sub- 
jects of the eternal King. Time exists no longer in 
that land of the living, and distance is annihilated 
there; and the charity which there reigns supreme 
enables all its inhabitants to revel in their sweet and 
blissful intercourse with each other from the centre, 
where Christ sits enthroned, to the utmost limit of 
its circumference. 

These are only germs of thought — imperfect helps 
toward meditation on the subject which is of all the 
most momentous and the most interesting. And it is 
.to this company of their departed brethren that our 
dead go "who die in the Lord." 

ECHOES OF A SAINTLY VOICE. 

Do not weary in pursuing our inquiry. We have 
only glanced, as yet, at one class of the citizens of 
the heavenly kingdom, and this by far the less 
numerous and less elevated. Wc have been with 
the Saints a few moments. Ere we pass to the com- 



136 N0VISSI3IA. 

pany of the angels, let us listen for a, moment to 
another voice. 

A beautiful page from a saintly writer may -well 
conclude our meditation on this subject: 

"Love makes all things sweet, and, as it is tor- 
turing pain to be separated from the object of true 
affection, so is it bliss to be with the loved one. 
Hence it is that, as the blessed love God even more 
than themselves, they are unspeakably happy in the 
enjoyment of His Presence and in the company of 
those who are most dear to them. A poor mother 
will take more delight in looking at her own child's 
inferior beauty, because he is her own, than at her 
noble neighbor's more handsome boy. The mutual 
love of the blessed is far above the natural love of 
mothers for their offspring ; every one of their holy 
company is most perfect and worthy of affection, 
being transformed by the Beatific Vision, and fired 
by the charity which all conceive for the living God : 
how delightful then must their mutual intercourse 
and conversation be ! Seneca says that the posses- 
sion of no good, how great soever, could satisfy 
unless it were shared by another. The possession, 
therefore, of the Supreme Good is rendered still 
more delightful in that it is shared by so exalted a 
company. "What pleasure could a man without a 
single companion find in the lordliest of palaces? It 
would soon become to him a dreary wilderness. 

" The city of God, on the contrary, is filled with 
the noblest citizens — all partakers of the same divine 
life, the same beatitude. What, then, must the con- 
versation of such wise and holy personages be? 
And how much their spiritual joy must be increased 
by their exchange of thoughts and sentiments? 



KOVISSIMA. 137 

For, if One of the greatest discomforts of human 
life be, to have to bear with the ill-temper, the 
follies, and the impertinences of rude and ill-bred 
people — and if one of its greatest pleasures is de- 
rived from conversing with gentle, pious and learned 
friends, we can fancy what will be the heavenly 
sweetness of that intercourse between the blessed, 
where no vulgarity, no rudeness, no impiety is possi- 
ble, but all is peace, piety, love, and sweetness. 
Hence St. Augustine says: ' Every one shall there 
"rejoice as much in the felicity of another as in his 
own ineffable joy, and shall have a source of new 
joy in every one of his companions. In that place 
are all things that are needful or delightful — all 
riches, ease, and comfort. Where God is, one can 
want nothing. All there know God without error, 
behold Him without interruption, praise Him without 
weariness, love Him without satiety, and find in this 
love a rest overflowing with God/ * 

" Besides all this, the security which the soul feels, 
that this possession of supreme bliss is unalterable 
and eternal, is in itself a source of joy unspeakable. 
In this life the fear of losing the goods that we 
enjoy embitters the cup of our sweetest pleasures. 
Pleasures lose all relish in presence of danger. The 
felicity of heaven being everlasting, can neither 
change nor diminish : their eternity is the crowning 
joy of the Saints." f 

*"Lit>ro de Spiritu et Anima." 
tNieremberg, "Temporal and Eternal," iv, 5." 



138 XOVISSIMA. 



CHAPTER X. 



AN HOUR IN HEAVEN WITH THE ANGELS. 



Christ's glorious axgelic empire. 

1. Another attempt to estimate the number of Christ's redeemed. 

2. The nine concentric and subordinate angelic worlds. 

WE CAN OXLY SEE A LITTLE CORNER OF THE 
GLORIOUS IMMENSITY. 

The best painters of the ages when Christian art 
had not degenerated from its divine ideal were con- 
tent, in treating such subjects as heaven, to give us 
only a small number either of Saints or of angels; 
and to these they gave a beauty all celestial. Trav- 
elers who have visited the Royal Museum, in Flor- 
ence, * will remember Fra Angelico's exquisite "Last 
Judgment," and the bands of the elect conducted 
upward along the slopes of the everlasting hills 
toward the shining gates of the heavenly Jerusalem. 
As they ascend, and approach the portals, the light 
from within gradually transforms every countenance. 

Where did Angelico behold that light and that 
unearthly beauty? His Saints and his angels are 
but few ; but they are types of the countless hosts of 
their happy brethren. So must we rest satisfied 
with gazing on one corner only of that twofold world 
on high. Let us dwell a little longer on the popu- 
lation of Christ's human kingdom before we mix 
among the multitudes of His angels. 

*This museum is near San Marco, and is quite distinct from the 
museums in the Ufflzi and the Pitti Palace. 



KoVissiMA. 139 

A FURTHER ESTIMATE OF TEE NUMBERS OF 
CHRIST'S ELECT. 



Everything in the life to come partakes of the 
Infinite. All oar notions of greatness, of time, and 
space, and numbers, must be laid aside, or much 
modified, when we come to measure the things which 
pertain to eternity. In estimating the number of 
those happy souls who, through grace and the saving 
merits of Christ, have succeeded in reaching heaven, 
we may have startled the unwary reader by summing 
them up at one thousand millions. A careful statis- 
tician, by merely ascertaining the probable Christian 
population of the globe four times in each century 
of the Christian era, and reckoning the number of 
Christian infants dying before the age when they 
could sin, would come to a figure probably little 
short of a thousand millions. A generous interpre- 
tation of what is said in the Gospel about the small 
number of the elect, and a large-hearted view of 
God's mercy toward adult Christians, would swell 
this figure to limits that we must leave to others to 
define with more precision. Certain it is that, in the 
mediseval times, as in the early ages of the Church, 
as even now in more than one country we could 
name, men and women set their hearts on dying well 
and making their peace with God thoroughly and 
sincerely, no matter how tepidly or sinfully they had 
lived. Nor was it the voice of the Church or her 
ministers which had, directly or indirectly, encour- 
aged the belief, that one could, at one's will, and 
through mere outward repentance, without change of 
heart and effectual reparation to God and man, 
merit on a death-bed the glory of God's everlasting 



140 NOVISSIMA. 

kingdom, or compensate at the last hour for all the 
evil done in a long mis-spent life. But these ages 
were ages of deep and living faith, when men had a 
vivid and abiding sense of God's judgments and of 
the meaning of heaven and hell. Xo matter, there- 
fore, how conscience had slept or its voice had been 
disregarded while health and strength lasted, at the 
approach of death it asserted its full power. Men 
trembled to appear guilt-stained, unrepentant, and 
unassoiled before the judgment seat. 

Christ's grace can ceeate a clean ^nd con- 
trite HEART IN A MOMENT. 

Then, again, men, in recalling Christ's death and 
suffering for sinners, could 110$ forget that He had 
promised the bliss of Paradise to the repentant 
robber crucified at His side. It was, therefore, one 
of the most solemn and comforting facts in the his- 
tory of man's redemption, that the Redeemer from 
His cross took the dying sorrow of His guilty com- 
panion in suffering and the cry of the dying sinner's 
heart as sufficient ground for forgiveness. And, 
not only that, but there are the never-to-be-forgotten 
words : "Ainen, I say to thee, this day thou shalt 
be with Me in Paradise." Here is a criminal recon- 
ciled to God in his last hour, and absolved by 
the Judge Himself. And that very day the soul of 
the repentant thief, prepared by love and grief and 
trust in the Saviour's mercy, purified by suffering 
willingly endured in such companionship, washed in 
the redeeming Blood, is associated in bliss with 
Christ Himself — with his blessed soul freed from 
the body, but enjoying, even before the Resurrection, 
as before his death, the ecstatic joys of the Beatific 
Vision. 



HOVISSIMA* 141 

Hero is one fact in answer to the heresy, that the 
souls of the departed, even of the just, are cast, 
somewhere and somehow, into a sleep which lasts 
from their separation from the body until the sound 
of the last trump. If He bestowed Paradise and 
the Beatific Vision on the penitent thief, did He 
withhold them from Noe, Abraham, Moses, and 
David? 

In the ages of living, practical faith, even the 
powerful, violent, lawless feudal nobles trembled 
when death was near, and, looking for mercy to 
Christ Crucified, remembered that He had pardoned 
the repentant thief. Who will dare to say that their 
sorrow was unavailing, or their appeal to the Re- 
deemer and Father of souls unheard? Who will 
presume to stand between Infinite Mercy and the 
dying sinner ? 

WERE THE MASSES OF THE LABORING POOR LOST 
IX THE CHRISTIAN AGES? 

And, then, there were, in these ages, the oppressed, 
the suffering, the believing multitudes — the poor 
whose lot on earth was so pitiable, and to whom 
Christ promised for inheritance the kingdom of 
heaven. He who writes these lines has long minis- 
tered to them, read their brave, honest hearts in life 
and health, and held their hand in his when they 
were entering the dread shadows of the valley of 
death. He does not believe that of them only the 
few are saved while the majority perish forever. 
Nor, going back, age after age, to the apostolic times, 
does he deem the notion tolerable, that the great mass 
of those who sincerely believe in Christ, and seek 
Him in life and in death, are lost to His kingdom. 



142 NOVISSIMA. 

You can, therefore, clear reader, double the One 
thousand millions, and even treble them, and still be 
far on this side of exaggeration or improbability. 

Christ's empire counts at least three thou- 
sand MILLIONS OF MEN. 

Three thousand millions of human beings enjoy- 
ing the possession of Christ's everlasting kingdom, 
admitted io the joys of the Beatific Vision, reigning 
on high eternally with God and His angels — what a 
magnificent result of Christ's labors hitherto, and of 
the apostolic mission continued after Him by the 
Church! And then add to that number the increase 
due to the labors of the Church through the thou- 
sands of years she still has to live. 

Oh ! the glorious kingdom where our humanity 
has its true home, its perfection, its beatitude! 

But we have not yet allowed our thought to dwell 
on the most exalted, and incomparably the most 
numerous, portion of its inhabitants — the angelic 
hosts. 

If, by allowing our mind thus calmly to think over 
the numbers of those whom the eternal Shepherd of 
souls has gathered into His fold — and to which such 
mighty accessions are sure to come in future ages — 
we are filled with gratitude toward Him, with great 
hope and great love, let us confirm and increase still 
more the spiritual exultation we feel by contem- 
plating the multitudes of these sublime spirits, the 
first-born among created things — the nearest in their 
natural attributes and excellence to the Divinity 
Itself. 

WITH THE ANGELS AT LAST. 

Let us begin with an estimate of their numbers. 
The Scriptures give us a few data; the teaching of 



NOVISSIMA. 143 

the great Christian schools and the writings of the 
Holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church will 
furnish a further supply of knowledge on this point. 

And, at the outset, let us bear in mind that in 
heaven the angels are our fellow-citizens, our breth- 
ren, our dearly loved and honored benefactors and 
friends, whose labors, ever since the world began, 
aimed at seconding God's designs over the human 
race. Most familiar, most loving, most delightful, 
is the intercourse of these mighty beings with the 
Saints, with every member of Christ's human family 
reigning with Him in glory. Incredible, then, as 
are the numbers of these angelic spirits, great as is 
the excellence of their nature, surpassing as is their 
glory, they are all — all our brethren and devoted 
friends. 

The great number of one's true and powerful 
friends on earth is a chief source of happiness, as it 
is reckoned to be a principal element in one's great- 
ness. The lowliest and least among the human 
inhabitants of the celestial kingdom count as many 
friends as there are Saints and angels together; for 
God Himself, being there our Friend, inspires all 
His subjects with the same sentiments of esteem and 
affection. 

ESTIMATES OF THEIR NUMBER. 

St. Paul, in the passage quoted above from the 
Epistle to the Hebrews, speaks of "many thousands 
of angels" as forming a part of that "cloud of 
witnesses" surrounding -Christ in the heavenly city. 

Daniel says that "thousands of thousands minis-' 
tered to Him, and ten thousand times a hundred 
thousand stood before Him." * And Baldad, in the 

* Daniel, vii, 10. 



144- XOVISSIMA. 

Book of Job, asks: "Is there any numbering of 
His soldiers ^ " * 

But the mighty hosts beheld in these passing 
prophetic visions as ministering immediately to the 
divine Majesty are only a fraction of the angelic 
armies, the remainder, and probably by far the 
greater part, being employed in governing the count- 
less worlds throughout the realms of space. Such 
is the sentimtent of some of the holiest and most 
learned Christian men of all time. 

"We repeat it: in approaching in thought the 
things of the invisible and eternal world, we must 
divest ourselves of our narrow notions, our limited 
views, of the petty standards by which we measure 
all things. We know that our own globe, immense 
as it appears to us, is, in reality, but a grain of sand 
lost in the infinitude of the great universe. And if 
all our measure prove too short and utterly fail 
us — even if " the scientific imagination " itself is 
overwhelmed in estimating mere material spaces, 
magnitudes, distances, as well as duration, which 
approaches nearer to what is spiritual — shall we not 
allow the mind, enlightened by Christian truth, to 
spread its wings, and soar beyond the uttermost 
limits of the starry world, and enter into that other 
world where time is not, where all is eternal, and 
where the Infinite God imparts to man and angel as 
much as they can bear of His infinitude, as much of 
His divine attributes as is compatible with a created 
nature ? 

MODEKX SCIOLISTS AND MEDIAEVAL SCHOLAES. 

Our modern sciolists, or self-constituted arbiters 
of knowledge and science, are wont to laugh at these 

* Job, xxv, 3. 



KOYISSIMA. 145 

great Christian scholars, whose genius created modern 
civilization. We, who are not carried away by 
materialistic theories or anti-Christian prejudices, 
can well appreciate the wonderful depth and breadth 
of view with which these mediaeval scholastics ap- 
proached the mighty problems presented by the 
unseen and spiritnal world. The ancient ecclesias- 
tical writer known as Dionysius the Areopagite 
wrote an exhaustive treatise on the angels and their 
hierarchies, or orders. It was a timely accession 
to Christian literature; for it refuted the Eastern 
heretical doctrines about angelic spirits, as summed 
up in Gnosticism, and it completed the dimly-out- 
lined doctrines and traditions of the Jewish Church 
upon the same subject. 

THE ANGELIC DOCTOR. 

St. Thomas Aquinas, who resumes in his own 
teaching all that is to be found in the Scriptures 
and the Holy Fathers, after stating with admirable 
clearness and precision the doctrine of the Church 
on these angelic spirits, enters upon speculations re- 
garding their nature, powers, numbers, and officers, 
which are worthy of reverential study, every position 
of his being founded either on the authority of 
Scripture and tradition or on some deep law of 
nature. 

One measured utterance of his on this subject is 
the following: "The proper order of the universe 
seems to demand that what is most noble among 
existing things should surpass either in quantity or 
in number the beings which are less noble; for the 
less noble seem only to exist for the more noble: 
whence it is needful that the more noble, existing as 



146 NOVISSIMA. 

it were for themselves, should be multiplied to the 
fullest extent possible." * 

Some writers have concluded from this and other 
passages in the writings of the "Angelic" Doctor — 
so-called because he wrote learnedly and magnifi- 
cently about the angels — that the number of these 
exalted beings, who are nearest to God in natural 
excellence, exceeds that of all the beings of the 
inferior creation taken together. But St. Thomas is 
careful to qualify his assertion. The order of the 
universe and the proper gradation of all things 
therein could, according to him, be as well secured 
by the " quantity " or amount of perfection in one or 
a limited number of superior beings, as by a great 
number of individuals enjoying each an inferior 
" quantity" or amount of perfection. Nevertheless, 
as these pure spirits, whose constitution renders them 
independent of matter, and are, like God Himself, 
all intellect and will, find their ultimate felicity in 
the contemplation and love of His infinite perfections, 
and in the enjoyment of their own blissful society, it 
would seem most worthy of the Creator's magnif- 
cence to have multiplied their number beyond that 
of all the beings of the inferior creation. 

WHY GOD SHOULD HAVE CREATED SO MANY 
ANGELS. 

There is no man, how good and great soever we 
may fancy him, but would surround himself with 
rational beings of his own kind rather than with 
dumb animals with whom there could be no intel- 
lectual intercourse. God is known, and loved, and 

* Ordo univers; exigere videtur ut id quod est in rebus nobilius 
excedat quantitate vel numero ignobiliora; jguobiliora enim videntur 
esse propter nobiliora; unde oportet quod nobiliora quasi propter se 
existentia multiplicentur quantum possibile est.— St. Thomas, " Summa 
Contra Gentes," L. II, 92. 



KOVISSIMA. 147 

praised by every angelic spirit; whereas the material 
world, though perfectly and wonderfully ordered, and 
resplendent with its own infinite beauty and variety, 
can lift no voice to praise its Author, and has no 
heart to love Him. 

In man, whose spiritual soul links him with the 
angelic world above him, while his body links him 
with all the descending ranks of being in the inferior 
world down to inorganic matter, God finds the mind 
to know Himself, and the heart to love and praise 
Himself in the name of all these beings of an inferior 
nature. Man is thus, between the Creator and the 
irrational creation, and with the inorganic world of 
matter, the great high priest who praises, worships, 
and glorifies God in their name. 

We have, in the light of reason and of faith, been 
endeavoring to form an estimate of the number of 
men who, true to God in their mortal lives, are 
judged worthy to reign with Him eternally. What 
the final number of the elect will be, He alone 
knoweth who has reserved to Himself the knowledge 
of that great last day which is to close the period of 
human existence upon this globe of ours. 

But to what magnificent proportions soever re- 
vealed truth and the sentiment of the Church 
permit us to swell the multitudes composing the 
human element in the Church Triumphant, we are 
safe in ascribing to the angelic hosts proportions in- 
comparably more magnificent. 

WHO WILL LIMIT THEIR NUMBERS? 

Who will set limits to the power and the goodness 
of our great God? And what an idea of both this 
greatness and goodness is derived from an attentive 



148 KOVISSIMA. 

consideration of the almost infinite multitudes who 
form the population of His heavenly kingdom! 

Let us not fear, therefore, to allow our minds to 
dwell with admiration, love, and awe on that most 
glorious people — the uncounted myriads of angels 
with whom God has destined us to be hereafter 
united. St. John, rapt like St. Paul to the gates of 
the everlasting city, finds no language sufficient to 
express what he has beheld there. His mind is 
chiefly taken up with the vision of the great people 
of Saints, human like himself, and most of them, 
like himself, children of Abraham. This vision 
was both to the Apostle and to his fellow-Christians 
of Hebrew descent a source of the greatest consola- 
tion. The book was written while the nation were 
being exterminated and their miserable remnants 
dispersed over the empire, and while the Romans 
were driving a ploughshare over the site of Jeru- 
salem. 

St. John lifts their minds and hearts to the con- 
templation of the heavenly Jerusalem and the inde- 
structible kingdom on high, in which, around Christ, 
the blessed race of Sem and Abraham held so con- 
spicuous a place. " I saw a great multitude," the 
Apostle says, "which no man could number, of all 
nations, and tribes, and peoples, and tongues, stand- 
ing before the throne, and in sight of the Lamb, 
clothed in white robes, and palms in their hands." * 
In the preceding chapter he says : "I beheld, and 
I heard the voice of many angels round about the 
throne, and the living creatures and the ancients: 
and the number of them was ten thousand times ten 
thousand, and thousands of thousands." f The 

* Apoc, vii, 9. f Ibidem, v, 11. 



NOVISSIMA. 149 

favored friend, the beloved disciple of Him who is 
hymned and adored there as the Lamb, is over- 
whelmed by the sublimity of the spectacle opened 
up before him. Words fail him to describe what he 
beholds. Even then, before the close of the first 
century of the Christian era, "no man could number" 
the blessed men and women gathered up in heaven 
as Christ's harvest. And as to the angels, no unit 
occurs to him as a first element of his enumeration : 
millions "and thousands of thousands," stretching 
away into the vastness of the heavenly city, make 
up the glorious object which dazzles and bewilders 
the sense of one who has not yet put off his mortal 
flesh. 

Were some one of these angelic spirits even now 
to come down and describe to us these mighty hosts, 
how could we take in and retain details, every one of 
which implies immensity? We may rest satisfied of 
this — that the numbers, the glory, the happiness, and 
the joy of that twofold united world of men and 
angels are worthy of Him whose goodness, love, and 
magnificence are mirrored forth in this His heavenly 
creation — the end and perfection of all His works. 

THE HIERARCHIES AND ORDERS OF ANGELS. 

Theologians, following certain indications in the 
text of Scripture, adopt the ideas of the writer 
known from early mediaeval times as Dionysius the 
Areopagite. From him St. Gregory the Great 
adopted the now common division of the angels into 
three hierarchies, each of which includes three orders. 
Thus, there are altogether nine degrees of subordi- 
nation, or excellence, in that seemingly boundless 
world of pure and blessed angelic spirits, with whoso 
eternal destinies ours are inseparably associated. 



150 HOVISSIMA. 

Each of these degrees comprises uncounted mill- 
ions of members, whose varied individual excellence 
furnishes to their own intelligence, and to that of 
their human fellow-citizens, a subject of delightful 
study and contemplation — a theme for rapturous 
praise of the divine Author of all things. 

We have often heard even well-educated people 
ask, If the occupation of the soul in heaven and 
throughout all eternity would not be monotonous, 
irksome, wearisome, in the perpetual contemplation 
of the Godhead, or the continual joining with the 
choirs of angels and Saints in praise of the divine 
Greatness, Goodness, and Mercy? 

Our clogged intellectual faculties here below find 
such difficulty in apprehending, though never so 
faintly and confusedly, the abysmal perfections and 
loveliness of the Infinite God, and the all but 
infinite extent, perfection, loveliness, magnificence, 
and variety of His works — all revealed in a new, 
clear, and wonderful light to the mind of the blessed 
in the life to come. What an endless source of de- 
light and joy must be the study and contemplation 
of the angelic world in its marvelous extent, its 
unimaginable grandeur and variety in the greatness, 
beauty, and loveliness of the beings who fill its 
shining ranks ! Only try to ascend in thought from 
those who minister at our sides, unseen to all our 
needs here below, up, up, up to those sublime spirits 
who stand nearest to God, in the perfection of their 
being, and in their offices toward His divine Majesty 
and the inferior creation! 

SUKSUM corda! 

To the man who closes his eyes to the distracting 
glare and glitter of this world of sense, and shuts 



KOVISSIMA. 151 

his ears against the noise of the street and the voices 
of the rushing multitude, and who invokes the Spirit 
of God to his aid, light will come to make him 
understand how incomprehensibly beautiful, magnifi - 
cent, and immense must be that world where these 
nine orders of angels rise one sublime- sphere above 
the other, leading the human mind and heart upward 
to the very essence and bosom of the Creator of all. 

WHY NOT LOVE TO EXPLOEE THE PROVINCES OF 
GOD'S EMPIRE. 

The wealthy, the educated, who have leisure to 
travel, find endless delight in visiting different coun- 
tries, peoples, and cities ; in contemplating the great 
architectural monuments — the masterpieces of art 
left by past genarations ; in studying the institutions, 
manners, and customs of peoples civilized and un- 
civilized. Others, in love with nature, explore the 
mountainous regions of both hemispheres, and take 
a pride in leaving their foot-prints on the highest 
and most inaccessible summits ; and others again are 
enthusiastic in studying the marvels of the vegetable 
or animal kingdoms beneath the tropics. The Brazil- 
ian forests, the East Indian Archipelago — wonderful 
fragments of a submerged continent — the mysterious 
depths of the African or Asiatic continents, offer to 
generation after generation of the learned and the 
adventurous a fertile field in which to win fame. 
And, in spite of the labors and enterprise of so 
many centuries, the surface of this' little globe of 
ours is only very partially known; its natural treas- 
ures are still a mine almost untouched. 

If it be so for a little speck of earth with its con- 
tents, what must it be for the boundless uu^crsc? 



152 NOVISSIMA. 

What, in particular, will it be for us in that vast and 
glorious world beyond the stars, where the God of 
Spirits reveals Himself to His own, and where shine 
displayed these spiritual empires to whose greatness, 
extent, and glory nothing here below that man's 
eye can see or his mind divine can afford the re- 
motest clue? 



IF WE COULD ONLY SPEND ONE HOUR THERE! 

An hour with the angels in heaven! Could we 
be privileged to spend it, as an encouragement to 
undergo further sufferings or face any amount of 
labor, the hour might seem an eternity of delight; 
and after such enjoyment all suffering would be 
sweet, and all labor of no account. O peoples com- 
posed of beings most like to God — O most blessed 
spirits, who are His most devoted servants and our 
most loving friends, a thousand and a thousand years 
would not suffice to survey your universe, to take 
note of what God has made you, of all that He has 
given you, to sound your love for Him, to measure 
the greatness and variety of your natures, to receive 
the expression of your brotherly charity for your 
human brothers ! But you who now, while we are 
still on the way to our heavenly home, guide our 
path and sustain our feeble efforts, give light to our 
minds and whisper comforting words to our faint 
hearts,- — you will introduce us one clay — O blessed 
day ! — into that world where we shall see you, know 
you, hear you, live with you eternally, and, by loving 
you and praising your excellence, love and praise in 
you the Almighty Giver of all being and perfection. 
"They that hope in the Lord shall renew their 
strength; they shall take wings as eagles; they shall 



NOVISSIMA. 153 

run and not be weary; they shall walk and not 
faint. " * So shall it be in that other life, when God 
Himself shall be as a river of strength, and light, 
and gladness, on whose bosom we shall be borne 
from realm to realm, from the centre to the circum- 
ference of that angelic empire, and round about its 
frontiers. Who can think of all this now, and 
believe all this, and not feel his soul lifted up almost 
to the everlasting gates, and a ray of light from the 
splendors within falling on his brow and kindling his 
soul to new sacrifices and heroic service for Him 
who rewards us with such fellowship? 



CHAPTER XI 



THE PLACE ITSELF. 



EXPLORING THE LAND OF THE LIVING. 

Israel, how great is the house of God, 
And how vast is the place of His possession ! 
It is great, and hath no end : it is high and immense. 

—Barucli, iii, 24-25. 

Hitherto we have allowed our mind to dwell on 
the blessedness of being eternally with God, of 
enjoying the bliss-bestowing sight of His Essence, 
of being taken into the secrets and intimacy of that 
life in which the Three divine Persons form a 
society, so united by perfect mutual love and mutual 
knowledge that their union is the type of all social 
life and love. We allowed ourselves then to rest 
our eyes on Christ, the Eternal Word and Son of 
God made Man for us men, and reigning in heaven 

*Isaias, xl, 31. 



154 KOYiSSIMA. 

both as Man and as God together with the glorious 
multitude of His redeemed. And we have just 
spent an hour gazing from afar at the resplendent 
armies of angels, who form with the redeemed the 
subjects of God's everlasting kingdom, the happy 
citizens of that heavenly Jerusalem — the abode of the 
peace eternal and unspeakable. 

We have now to speak of that particular place 
beyond the limits of this ever-moving, ever-chang- 
ing, perishable universe, where He who called all 
creation into being has framed a perfect world to be 
the country, the home, in which He, the Father of 
all, is to dispense bliss unmeasured to the children 
worthy of His love ; the home into which He gathers 
from exile and trial all who have believed in Him 
without seeing Him, hoped in Him and loved Him 
through all the storms of adversity and the long 
Arctic cold and darkness of an unbelieving and 
scoffing world; the glorious kingdom, in which His 
reign consists in doing the will of the faithful ser- 
vants who have here below made His will their law 
and life, and in intoxicating them with draughts 
from the fountain of divinest knowledge and most 
ecstatic bliss. 

Who can attempt to describe to those who are still 
struggling on over a road bordered by the crowded 
graves of past generations, with death ever hovering 
above their path, ready to snatch away his victims at 
any moment, that land of the living, at whose fron- 
tiers death's power expires? O empire, of which 
nothing on earth or in the worlds one beholds float- 
ing around it can give an image — empire of eternity, 
everlasting reign of peace, of truth, of charity, if I 
could only speak of thee aright! 



novtssima. 155 

baruch's sublime conception of the place. 

There is in one of the prophetic books, written 
daring the Babylonian captivity, a chapter of sur- 
passing eloquence, all aglow with the divine fire 
of inspiration, and abounding in utterances that 
verily seem to come from one who has seen the 
glories of heaven and speaks to his exiled and de- 
spairing brethren from within the splendors of the 
other life. " How happen eth it, O Israel, that thou 
art in thy enemies' land? Thou art grown old in a 
strange country; thou art defiled with the dead; 
thou art counted with them that go down into hell. 
Thou hast forsaken the Fountain of Wisdom; for if 
thou hadst walked in the way of God thou hadst 
surely dwelt in peace forever. Learn where is wis- 
dom, where is strength, where is understanding: 
that thou mayst know also where is length of days 
and life, where is the light of the eyes and peace. 

. . . O Israel, how great is the house of God, 
and how vast is the place of His possession ! It is 
great, and hath no end : it is high and immense. " * 

OPINIONS CONCERNING THE SITUATION OF THE 
PLACE. 

The Hebrew doctors and commentators commonly 
taught that there were seven heavens, or divisions 
of the universe, outside of our globe, the highest or 
remotest of which w r as the abode of the blessed. 
St. Paul speaks of having been " caught up into the 
the third heaven/ 7 and then "caught up into para- 
dise," as if the third heaven were only a resting 
place on the upward journey to paradise. But St. 
Paul, like the Hebrew teachers from whom he had 

*Barucli, iii, 10-25. 



156 xoYissruA, 

learned cosmography, did not presume to give a pre- 
cise and formally revealed notion of the supernal 
paradise and its location in space. Both he and 
they spoke in accordance with the science of their 
respective ages and the traditional notions inherited 
from the past. St. Thomas Aquinas maintains that 
there are three heavens: the sidereal or starry 
heaven, the crystalline, and the empyrean — this last 
being the place where God has created the home of 
His elect, the kingdom and empire reserved to His 
faithful servants — angels and men. 



In this division modern science can find nothing 
to object to. The space reserved to such visible and 
invisible solar systems as we can discover with our 
telescopes may extend to a distance for the measure- 
ment of which the orbit of the Planet Xeptune 
might be assumed as any fraction of a unit, or a full 
unit, at our will. Beyond this belt of suns, systems, 
and nebular or cosmic masses, the "scientific imagin- 
ation" can fancy that second or far wider belt, 
or hollow sphere, called the " crystalline heaven." 
Remotest of all would be that most wonderful, per- 
fect, and magnificent world — the empyrean space of 
the scholastics, the heaven of heavens, the abode of 
the blessed. It were worse than blind, unreasoning 
folly, where one admits the existence of a God, of an 
infinitely perfect, powerful, and wise personal Being, 
who is the Creator and the Ruler of all that exists, 
to get appalled or confused by the immensities of 
space, the plurality, magnitude or magnificence of 
worlds called into existence, embellished and regu- 
lated by Him whose power, whose wisdom, and 



^"OVISSIMA. 157 

whose riches no creative act can exhaust. Jews 
and Christians believe in such a God. Christians, 
moreover, believe in the Incarnation accomplished; 
in the existence of a future life in which the Incar- 
nate Son of God is to reign over angels and men ; 
of a kingdom, a heaven, a paradise, in which God's 
glory is to shine forth with a splendor that nothing 
here below can foreshadow. 

Clearly He, whom we believe to have made our 
earth and made our sun in the firmament, and 
created all that we see in space around us, can, 
without any stretch of His omnipotence, make some- 
thing better than the sun, something even more 
infinite in vastness, grandeur, and magnificence, than 
yonder Milky Way. 

We are now considering the supreme display of 
His power, love and wisdom, in the creation of that 
true country in which He purposed from the begin- 
ning to gather His exiles — the home which He has 
prepared for His own. We shall, therefore, believe 
that the grander, the more immense, the more mag- 
nificent under every one of its aspects, that heavenly 
world or empire can be, the more worthy it is of our 
Father and our God. 



OLOGY. 

The divine book of Scripture, from beginning to 
end, clearly teaches that heaven is outside of our 
earth. Beyond this the Church has defined nothing; 
and we are left free, guided always by the united 
lights of reason and faith, to speculate on the matter, 
without presuming to dogmatize, or give for positive 
and revealed truth what is only the reverent opinion 
of the most enlightened and the most pious. 



158 * STOVISSIMA. 

A great and saintly writer of the sixteenth century, 
discussing, in his green old age, this mighty topic of 
the life to come, resumes all that is most consoling 
in the doctrine of the Church and the belief of the 
Christian ages in the following words : 

"The dwelling-place is called the kingdom of 
heaven, and that for many reasons. The first is, that 
it is a region of the vastest extent — vaster, indeed, 
than the limits of human thought can conceive. 
The earthly globe which, compared with the highest 
heaven (supremnm ccelurn), is a mere speck, neverthe- 
less embraces many great kingdoms — so many that 
we can scarcely count them. How immense, then, 
must be that kingdom which is alone of its kind, and 
which comprises the entire extent of the heaven of 
heavens, with its immeasurable spaces?" * 

The present accepted systems of astronomy and 
cosmography had only begun to be seriously dis- 
cussed in the age of Bellarmine. Xevertheless, his 
conception of that "immeasurable region placed 
beyond the highest visible heaven — super ccelcstis 
regio," is consonant alike with the reality, with the 
researches of science, and with the teaching of the 
greatest Christian intellects. Bellarmine, of course, 
affirms that God's empire extends over all created 
space. But of this wide domain he claims the 
highest rank for that special province, kingdom, or 
country, in which God's most exalted creatures, His 
princes and sons, dwell everlastingly. 

* Bellarminus, "De sterna Felicitate Sanctorum," L. I, c. i : Kabi- 
tatio Sanctorum rnultis de causis Eegnum coelorum dicitur. Primum 
quia regio est amplissima, et multo amplior quam humanae cogitationis 
augustise capere passint. Orbis terra?, qui veluti punctum est, si com- 
paretur ad supremum caelum, multa et magna Eegna complectitur, ut 
vix numerari queant : quantum igitur erit Eegnum illud, quod est 
unicum, et par totam cceli ccelorum latitudinum spratiaque diffun- 
ditur ! 



HOVISSIMA. 159 

" That sublime habitation/' he goes on to say, " is 
called the kingdom of heaven for this further reason, 
that it contains such a multitude and diversity of in- 
habitants as no abode or city could contain, such, 
indeed, as belongs only to the vastest monarchies." * 

EAPTURE CAUSED BY THE THOUGHT OF THAT 
WOULD. 

Of course, both the Saints in glory and their 
fellow-citizens, the angels, will find, throughout all 
the cycles of eternity, an infinite variety of bliss in 
viewing not only the immense extent of their own 
immediate country, but also the different worlds 
throughout space, in which the Almighty Father 
manifests His power and His wisdom. The Beatific 
Vision follows them everywhere. All places, all 
occupations, the contemplation of His magnificence 
in His works, ever bring His face and the loveliness 
of His Being more vividly before them. Remem- 
ber — to compare earthly things with the heavenly — 
that great-souled and holy man, who, being for- 
bidden by his physician to think so constantly of 
God and divine things, endeavored to distract his 
thoughts by wandering among the flower-beds in 
the garden. His love for the God of his soul 
wasted his bodily frame; the sweet tears that 
flowed so plentifully and continuously threatened 
the loss of his eye-sight. They thought the air 
of the open fields would revive him, that the 
sight of the flowers would distract his mind and 
repose the weakened eyes. And, as he went 
from flower-bed to flower-bed, bending low to ex- 
amine the beautiful things, their wonderful colors, 
and delightful fragrance, in every one of them he 

* Ibidem. 



160 KOVISSIXA. 

saw the hand of God; in all this varied beauty and 
sweetness, a foretaste of the clear sight of the divine 
Loveliness threw his spirit into rapture, and the 
tears flowed anew ; for it was in vain to endeavor to 
lock up in that pure and much-chastened soul the 
fountain of love and gratitude. Excluded from 
the garden, he would retire to the top of the house, 
to be far away from the noises of the street, and to 
enjoy a wider view of the starry heavens in the 
cloudless sky of Rome. But the spectacle of all 
these worlds only lifted his soul upward toward their 
Creator — up to that kingdom where He stands re- 
vealed to the eyes of His own. And then all the 
magnificence of that everlasting kingdom seemed 
disclosed to the pilgrim, now near the end of his 
road, and his heart became aflame with the desire to 
lay aside this mortal coil, and to be present with 
Christ at the eternal source of life and joy. And 
when his own sought for him and would lead him 
away from this consuming contemplation, he would 
exclaim: "O earth, how little, how insignificant art 
thou when we think of heaven ! " 

Aye, what is it all in comparison with the king- 
dom of God, the land of the living? 

suesum coeda! 

Oar faith, therefore, bids us not only to open wide 
our hearts when we come, to think of that broad 
empire where Infinite Love reigns supreme, but also 
to enlarge our minds, and give our thoughts wings to 
bear them over all these immensities. Do we, in 
the midst of this sensual, sceptical nineteenth cen- 
tury, need as much as the converted Corinthians of 
St. Paul, that he, come down from paradise, should 



NOVISSIMA. 161 

repeat to us the words of Isaias : " Eye hath not 
seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into 
the heart of man, what tilings God hath prepared 
for them that love Him." It is worth while to 
glance at the text of Isaias itself: "From the 
beginning of the world they have not heard, nor 
perceived with the ears : the eye hath not seen, 
O God, besides Thee, what things Thou hast pre- 
pared for them that wait for Thee.' 7 

We did not dare to fathom the bliss bestowed by 
the Beatific Vision, nor to dwell long on Christ's 
glorified humanity, enthroned at the right hand of 
God and communicating to the countless millions of 
His redeemed the immortality, the glory, the supernal 
bliss of body and soul, which are the fruit of His 
own victory over suffering and death ; and we only 
glanced at the intolerable splendors of those mighty 
hosts of angelic spirits — our companions, friends, 
and brethren in heaven for all eternity. 

Truly, "from the beginning of the world they 
have not heard nor perceived with the ears" what 
is meant by that kingdom; that land where men live 
eternally; that glorious country of the blessed; that 
home of which it is truly said : " The eye hath not 
seen, O God, beside Thee, what things Thou hast 
prepared for them that wait for Thee." 

Kemember, that in that land the elect of our race 
are to live, after the resurrection, in body and soul, 
their heavenly existence being in every way like to 
that of Christ risen from the dead. * Their bodies 
will be endowed with the same spirit-like qualities 
which appeared in His while He conversed with 
His Apostles and Disciples during the forty days 

* We shall treat of their qualities when we have described the 
general resurrection. 



162 NOVISSIMA. 

before the Ascension. This shall be treated of at 
length in another chapter. We only mention it 
here to enable you to understand with what infinite 
ease the gift of "agility," bestowed on the bodies of 
the Saints, and described so minutely and from 
sound Scriptural data, will enable them to pass 
from one province to the other of their heavenly 
domain. 

HOW THE BLESSED ENJOY THEIR IMMENSE DOMAIN. 

Just as the divine power, added by the Light of 
Glory to both the intellectual vision and the bodily 
sight, makes the most distant objects in the remotest 
parts of the universe visible and almost present to 
the sense ; even so will the glorified children of God 
be enabled to pass with such incredible rapidity from 
the centre to the extremities of their heavenly abode, 
that they may be said to be, practically, present to 
every part of it. 

ANTICIPATING THE RESURRECTION. 

We may borrow from the science of our day a 
familiar illustration of our meaning. The electro- 
magnetic fluid travels, like light, with such incon- 
ceivable rapidity that both the one and the other 
make the circuit of our globe in an instant of time. 
Thus, one using the telegraph at the remotest shore 
of the Pacific Ocean could communicate, if the tele- 
graph wires were continuous, with his family or 
friends not only at the opposite extremity of that 
world of waters, but at the very antipodes, in a 
very brief space of time. Electricity thus enables 
men at the opposite poles of the earth to speak 
to each other, to be in a way present to each 



kovissima. i63 

other, thereby annihilating distance. The gradual 
improvement of the electric telephone already per- 
mits instantaneous communication by speech to per- 
sons situated in the opposite extremities of a great 
city and its suburbs. Nay, the electric wires .already 
convey sound distinctly from one city to another. 
Nor is it possible to say how far these means of 
social intercourse may be perfected in the near 
future. Moreover, light, which travels faster even 
than electricity, is already beginning to be made use 
of in telegraphy. Man is only discovering slowly, 
age after age, the wonderful secrets and agencies of 
the material world. And by the use of these he 
becomes, in a certain and real manner, present at 
will to the remotest portions of his earthly habita- 
tion, to the most distant tribes of his fellow-men. 

But these material fluids or agencies, which thus 
enable man to speak with his fellow-men at the ends 
of the earth, and this wonderful substance called 
ether, which science supposes to exist through all 
space, are only the dim images of the true spiritual 
substances — of God, angels, and human souls. The 
capacities of ether pervading the universe, and bear- 
ing from one end to the other of creation on its 
particles the images of things, and flashing their 
knowledge on the wings of light, should teach us to 
anticipate and divine the far mightier capacities of 
the glorious and living spiritual substances for whose 
use this world was made. 

If human thought expressed by human speech can 
travel round the globe on a metallic thread with 
almost incalculable speed, what must be the power 
of those pure and mighty spiritual beings whom we 
call angels, and who come nearest to the Infinite 



104 HxmsgncA. 

Creator? And what also shall be, in their glorified 
condition in the other life, the power of human 
spirits and of their spiritualized bodies endowed by 
that same Creator with qualities rendering them in 
every way able to second the desires and movements 
of the animating soul? 

We can, with the aid of such considerations as 
these, perceive the perfect truth of what was said in 
a preceding chapter, that to each of the inhabitants 
of God's celestial empire, the uttermost extent of its 
boundaries, in its length and breadth, its height and 
depth, would only be what to a sound eye would be 
the interior of a hall or basilica. 

And yet. the power of thus passing, with the 
rapidity of thought, round and round the immeas- 
urable -paces of that magnificent and privileged 
universe will detract nothing from the intense 
spiritual enjoyment of contemplating the perfect 
beauty and infinite variety which the Creator has 
imparted to His work. 

THE HEAYEXLY COE/XTEY OE CITY; THE HOWE OF 
THE BEIDE. 

We have seen how the inspired writers in the 
Bible speak of this everlasting empire and its 
glories, in a strain which approaches mental intoxi- 
cation, although it is quite clear that they have 
nly vouchsafed a shadowy and most imperfect 
glimpse at the reality. St. John, in the Apocalypse. 
or Revelations, conveys the most appropriate and 
satisfactory notion both of the place and its inhabi- 
tants, by representing them both as a bride prepared 
and decked for her nuptials with the Bridegroom, 
- own Eternal Son made Mam and to be united 



KOVISSIMA. 165 

in perfect and everlasting felicity with His spiritual 
body, the elect of blessed angels and blessed men. 

What the most powerful, the most perfect, and 
most devoted of men would do for the woman 
chosen to be his bride from among all womankind, 
that, to an infinitely superior degree, and in the 
divine order, will Christ and His Father and the 
Holy Spirit do for the body of the elect — the heavenly 
spouse. The wealth and labor expended in earthly 
bridals, on preparing a palace, costly raiment, and 
rarest jewels, banquets and festivities, can only sug- 
gest to the enlightened and spiritual-minded what 
the Almighty, in His wisdom and love, has done to 
create and adorn a home worthy of Himself and the 
friends whom He gathers there to share the bliss of 
His own intimate society, His own life for evermore. 

THE BRIDAL FEAST. 

We have endeavored to describe both the im- 
mensity and glory of that happy multitude, and the 
vastness and magnificence of the abode prepared for 
them. These bridals are to last forever; no decay 
can ever touch the stones of that house of the Lamb, 
no dimness can fall on the dazzling lustre of its gold, 
or the sheen and sparkle of its gems. The flowers 
which crown the guests at that bridal feast shall 
never fall or fade. The joys which fill every bosom 
there shall never cease to be renewed, even when the 
suns we behold shall have long lost their light, and 
not one drop shall be left in the bosom of the Pacific 
and Atlantic Oceans. 

THE MAGNIFICENT HOME PREPARED FOR IIS BY OUR 
FATHER. 

The other names bestowed in Scripture on the 
everlasting abode of the Saints — those of city, house, 



166 xovissniA. 

and paradise, or garden of delights — will scarcely 
help us to arrive at a fuller and more satisfactory 
conception of the mere physical heaven than what 
has already been said. "When, here below on our 
earth, a parent, whose sole aim is to provide a home 
for his offspring, bestows both his means and his 
utmost labor not only on erecting for himself and 
them a dwelling that shall last for ages, but also on 
creating near it a garden and plantation which shall 
minister to their delight, we have an image of what 
fatherly love and forethought are ever prompted to do. 
But this instinctive and provident love of the human 
parent is intended to guide our thoughts toward the 
perfect creations, in our behalf, of the almighty love 
of the Father in heaven. 

The endeavors and labors of parental devotion in 
this life to secure the independence and happiness of 
those most dear should prepare our understanding to 
conceive what that Fatherly Love is doing in the 
better world, where infinite power is at Its command 
to build up a home and plant a paradise which may 
fill with rapture the angelic spirits as well as those 
of their human brethren. Men and women who 
have a keen sense of the beauties of nature take 
great delight in embellishing their home with the 
most beautiful works of art, and in surrounding it 
with gardens and parks filled with the most ex- 
quisite flowers, the rarest plants, the stateliest 
trees — all, in a word, that is most magnificent in the 
vegetable world. 

In the heavenly paradise, or garden of delights, 
there lacks in Him, who planned it for His own, 
neither the power nor the will to make everything 
in nature minister to their sense of the beautiful, 
everything sing a hymn to the glory of the Creator. 



stovissima. 167 

But What is all the varied beaut}', all the un- 
dreamed-of magnificence of the physical world, com- 
pared to the spectacle oifered to God and to each of 
His Saints by the spiritual beauty of their own 
radiant multitudes? "Thy Saints, O Lord, shall 
bloom forth like the lily : and as the odor of balsam 
shall they be before Thee." Hence Dante, in his 
descriptions of paradise, likens the shining ranks of 
the blessed to an immense flowering expanse, over 
whose blooming and dazzling surface the angels, like 
bees of living fire, were continually darting hither 
and thither, as if intoxicated with the sweets they 
sipped from all this infinite loveliness and fragrance. 

Hence, too, the burning words of the Psalmist: 
" Sing ye to the Lord a new canticle : let His praise 
be in the church [assembly] of the Saints. 
Let them praise His name in choir : let them sing 
to Him with the timbrel and the psaltery. . 
The Saints shall rejoice in glory: they shall be joy- 
ful in their beds." * 

Like guests at the banquets of the ancients, the 
blessed are represented as reclining each on a bed 
around the festive board. We know now on what 
they feed, and how full and intoxicating is their cup. 
What wonder that " The high praises of God shall 
be in their mouth" evermore! "In that eternal 
home," says St. Gregory the Great, "while the mind 
of the just rapturously bursts forth into high praise, 
their voice is raised in a song of thanksgiving." f 
More than that says St. Augustine: "Their sole 
labor is endless praise of God, without ceasing, with- 
out wearying. Oh! happy should I be, and ever- 
lastingly happy, if, after laying down this wretched 

* Psalm CXLIX, 1-5. t " Moralium," L. VIII, c. 39. 



168 KOVISSIMA. 

body, I could deserve to hear the strains of that 
heavenly melody sung in praise of the eternal King 
by the citizens of that supernal country and the 
hosts of the blessed spirits. Most fortunate and 
happy beyond measure shall I be if I may deserve 
to sing these strains myself, and to stand thus before 
my King, my God, my Chief, and to behold Him in 
His glory ! " * 



CHAPTER XII 



THE PLACE ITSELF— ITS PHYSICAL CONDITIONS. 



You will ask, But what are the physical conditions 
of that land of the living, the eternal abode of the 
children of God? The question is a natural one, 
and comes in opportunely here. Let your own 
reason calmly weigh every consideration that is 
about to be presented in answer to this query. It 
is wonderful how much reason, when it apply its 
own power undisturbedly, and beneath the eye of 
God, to investigate these lofty subjects, discovers of 
mines of hidden truth. 

THE MOST PERFECT OF WORLDS FOR THE MOST 
PERFECT OF BEINGS. 

As both angels and men, in their state of final 
perfection in heaven, are assigned a dwelling-place 
worthy of the almighty power, wisdom, and love 
of their Master and Parent; so is it in accordance 
with the invariable laws of His providence that all 

*St. Augustine, "Meditations," c. 25. 



tfOVISSIMA. 169 

the physical conditions of the world, created and dis- 
posed especially' for their uses, should be in perfect 
harmony with their supreme bliss, with the condi- 
tion of their own physical, nature, and the require- 
ments of their moral and physical existence. 

Now, if we consider on the surface of our own 
little planet how nature — or, rather, He who is the 
Author, Lawgiver, and Ruler of nature — has fitted 
every living thing in the vegetable and animal world 
to its surroundings, and has adapted these surround- 
ings themselves to the living things they are destined 
to feed and sustain, we shall find little, if any, diffi- 
culty in conceiving how the Almighty Hand has 
framed and disposed all things in the heavenly 
empire in conformity with the life of its blessed 
inhabitants. 

VARIED CONDITIONS OF LIFE ON OUR PLANET. 

Travelers and naturalists who have ventured 
nearest to the Arctic and Antarctic poles have found 
life on the land as well as in the waters of these 
desolate, snow-clad, and ice-bound regions. Beneath 
what would seem the everlasting snows of the highest 
latitudes, heaths and mosses live. This the scanty 
herds of reindeer which roam over the interior of 
Greenland know perfectly well. For their instinct, 
or intelligence, leads them to seek the sunniest plains 
and slopes, where the snow lies least thick, and this 
they scrape away with their feet, or help to thaw 
with their breath, till they get at the underlying 
heaths and mosses. But how do these manage not to 
perish beneath their thick covering of snow and ice? 

Our boldest explorers and most intelligent ob- 
servers remarked that such heaths as the Andromeda, 



170 KOVISSIMA. 

by their vital heat and respiration — -for all organic 
substances respire — form a veritable ice-coated dome 
in the overlying snow, and this protects them from 
the intense cold of the atmosphere. They found 
the lovely little heath, with its buds all formed in 
their sheaths, ready for the return of spring. Even 
so the polar bear and the seal form for themselves, or 
seek in the thick snow and ice, caves in which the 
former sleeps away a part of the long Arctic night, 
and to which the latter retires for rest and security 
near the water that affords it abundant food. Nor 
must you fancy that the Arctic seas themselves, even 
around the pole, and loaded with their enormous 
burthen of ice, are bereft of all living things. It is 
quite otherwise. God, who balances our globe upon 
its axis, and imparts to it the double movement of 
diurnal revolution and yearly translation round the 
sun, sends the warm currents of the equatorial and 
tropical waters, all teeming with life, to warm and 
vivify the polar seas, while the icy currents from 
these are ever flowing toward the equator, there to 
be heated anew and return to whence they had come. 
Thus does life, with heat, circulate in the very waters 
all over the earth — a study for the deepest philoso- 
phy, but not the result of man's contrivance. 

So in every zone of climate all over the earth does 
the all-wise Ruler and Maker suit to every living 
thing the soil and atmosphere of its birthplace, and 
cause plant, and beast, and bird, as well as the reptile 
in the grass and the insect on the wing, to be born 
and to thrive amid a nature in every way adapted to 
their various wants and capacities. 

The Creator of man, in preparing and disposing 
this globe for his temporary dwelling-place, evi- 
dently intended him to live rather amid the fertile 



STOVISSIMA. 171 

and genial regions of the two temperate zones than 
in the dark, icy, awful solitudes around either pole, 
or in the sandy and sunburnt deserts of the tropics, 
or even among the • teeming aud unhealthy forests 
beneath the equator. Still, even there, as we know, 
Providence by degrees adapts the physical frame of 
man to the excessive heat and the equally excessive 
moisture. 

If we pass from the present conditions of human 
life on this earth to that other and final stage of 
human existence, we can apply these analogies to the 
physical conditions of the heavenly country. We 
must consider that God destines it to be the abode 
of man not merely during the period before the 
resurrection, while the soul is separated from the 
body; but also during the endless cycles of that 
blissful existence, when the souls of the just being 
reunited to immortal bodies, man shall live in body 
and soul as long as God in the heavens. 

Whether the blessed society of men and angels in 
the life eternal shall be united on one mighty sphere, 
as superior to the sun in extent as the sun itself sur- 
passes this little globe of ours, or whether their home 
shall be a world composed of innumerable suns with 
their satellites, all governed by this law, that they 
shall contribute in every way to the perfect felicity 
of their inhabitants, it were idle here to inquire. 

We know for certain — for it is a matter of faith, 
expressly revealed in the New Testament — that the 
bodies of the Saints shall be like that of Christ 
Himself, divinely raised above the present needs, 
and dangers, and infirmities. We shall feel there 
neither hunger nor thirst ; shall suifer from neither 
heat nor cold; we shall fear neither pain, nor illness, 



172 NOVISSIMA. 

nor decay, nor old age. The institutions divinely 
appointed here below for the growth of the race, and 
its social welfare, shall have there no reason for 
existing. Men will not be born in that kingdom, or 
grow from infancy to adult age, or need to be pro- 
tected against the approach of sickness and death. 
They will be perfect in every faculty of soul, and 
perfect also in every bodily sense and power needed 
for the purposes and enjoyment of that most holy 
and perfect life. 

PEEFECT FITNESS — THE LAW OF THE PHYSICAL 
WOULD IN HEAVEN. 

Whatever, therefore, there is in the bodily senses 
wnich is intended and adapted by the Creator to 
contribute to the perfection and felicity of the spirit 
in the life to come, that will have its proper object 
and sphere of enjoyment there. For the human 
soul is endowed with a twofold excellence; it is 
both rational and sensitive. The rational faculties 
in heaven have their peculiar bliss in the clear sight 
of God and the manifold and most perfect knowl- 
edge accompanying it; the bodily senses have also 
their satisfaction and happiness in the perception of 
the many most noble and beautiful objects suited to 
their exercise. 

EVERYTHING IN HEAVEN THE PERFECTION OF 
PHYSICAL BEAUTY. 

The very names bestowed in Scripture on the 
heavenly abode, and the very descriptions given of 
it under these various designations, indicate extra- 
ordinary perfection and loveliness in the physical 
conditions of the place. If it is painted to us as a 



NOTISSIMA. 173 

city, its structures are of the rarest, most precious, 
and most magnificent materials known to the human 
mind, or even expressed in human language. The 
dwelling-place of the elect is "a new heaven and a 
new earth." The holy city — the "New Jerusalem" 
— is seen "coming down out of heaven, from God, 
prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." This 
is "'the tabernacle of God with man," where "He 
will dwell with them. And they shall be His people : 
and He shall be their God." It has "the glory of 
God: and the light thereof is like to a precious 
stone, as to the jasper-stone, even as crystal. . . . 
And the building of the w r all thereof was of jasper- 
stone : but the city itself pure gold, like to clear 
glass. And the foundations of the wall of the city 
were adorned with all manner of precious stones. 
. . . The twelve gates are twelve pearls. . 
And the street of the city was pure gold, as it were 
transparent glass. . . . And the city hath no 
need of the sun, nor of the moon, to shine in it; for 
the glory of God hath enlightened it, and the Lamb 
is the lamp thereof. And the nations shall walk in 
the light of it: and the kings of the earth shall bring 
their glory and honor into it. There 

shall be no night there." * 

If w r e divest this description of the high coloring 
so natural to the Oriental imagination, and of the 
figurative forms given to the language of all Eastern 
peoples, the simple substance and obvious meaning 
of the Apostle-Prophet will suffice to prove that in 
the land of the living, in the city of God on high, 
the divine magnificence will display itself by sur- 
rounding the happy denizens with all the objects 

* Apoc, xxi, 1-25. 



174 NOVISSIMA. 

which can charm the purified and exalted bodily 
sense, and impart to the entire physical world there 
the dispositions most in accord with the high spirit- 
ual nature of its inhabitants, and their state of ever- 
lasting peace, continual contemplation of the divine 
Essence, and all the wondrous works of the God- 
head, with their blissful intercourse with the Three 
divine Persons, and their companionship with each 
other and with the angelic hosts. 

St. John, to convey to those who still live upon 
earth and take their estimates of what is most beau- 
tiful and precious from the usual standards prevalent 
even in our own day, speaks of the land of the living 
as "a bride adorned for her husband." This sug- 
gests the utmost display of ornament. And, when 
we recollect that the society of the blessed is else- 
where called "the bride of the Lamb," and that He, 
the divine Bridegroom, bestows his utmost power 
and care in preparing and decking out the abode of 
His bride, we must conclude that heaven is, even 
in its physical constitution and outward charms, as 
far above the earthly Paradise, in which Adam and 
his newly created companion were placed, as the 
perfect life of eternity and the exalted state of those 
w 7 ho enjoy it are above earth as it is, and what expe- 
rience tells of its pleasures and its grandeurs. 

THE BLESSED IN HEAVEN BETTER ABLE TO APPRE- 
CIATE god's WOEKS. 

Seeing God clearly as He is in Himself, the light 
of divine knowledge, which elevates and expands 
the powers of the mind and those even of the bodily 
vision, enables each blessed soul to know and appre- 
ciate thoroughly all the glorious works of God. 



KOVISSIMA. 175 

The most glorious, undoubtedly, is that church of 
the heavens, that bride of the Lamb, that society of 
men and angels whose Head is Christ the Son of 
God made Man; and what a world for study, for 
contemplation, for rapturous admiration and ecstatic 
love is that society in which Christ is Head and 
Lord ! And next to that spiritual and moral world 
is the heaven of heavens, the magnificent universe 
created, regulated, and adorned for the abode and 
the happiness of the glorified children and servants 
of God. 

The great early Christian scholars and teachers, 
whom we call the Fathers of the Church, were wont 
to give their cotemporaries some idea of the physical 
aspect of the heavenly paradise by describing the 
earthly one, thus enabling hearer or reader to con- 
clude how incomparably superior the former must 
be to the latter. Thus, for instance, does St. Basil 
the Great speak of Eden : 

" There the winds lose their violence ; the seasons 
their extremes of heat and cold; there is neither 
hail, nor lightning, nor whirlwinds; there is neither 
the frost of winter nor the rains of spring, neither 
the heat of summer nor the withering dryness of 
autumn. All the seasons conspire to maintain a 
moderate and harmonious temperature. The seasons 
themselves seem to circulate with joyous dance 
around that happy realm. All the pleasures of 
spring-tide blend there with the fecundity of summer, 
the joys of autumn, and the repose of winter. The 
streams are narrow and clear, delighting the eye 
by their brightness— sources of greater usefulness 
even than pleasure. God made the place on purpose 
to be a nursery for all His plants and flowers. 



176 NOVISSIMA. 

With time sprang up trees of every kind, most beau- 
tiful to look upon, most delightful to the eye, and 
bearing all manner of delicious fruit." * 

But the words of even St. Basil are colorless and 
fail to bring forth in relief a single outline of the 
divine picture afforded by the reality. The highest 
sanctity and the sublimest genius, while cumbered 
with this body of flesh, vainly strive to think out 
what the land of the living should be and is, and, 
more vainly still, attempt to express these feeble 
imaginings. 

"What could the race of man (in the state of 
innocence) have to do with fear or grief," asks 
St. Augustine, "amidst the affluence of all things 
that were best? There was no fear of death, no 
danger of ill health; they lacked nothing of all that 
a righteous will could obtain. Nor had man, living 
in bliss, any internal element that could wound 
either mind or body. Their love for God was one 
that nothing troubled, and so was that which linked 
husband to wife in faithful and pure intercourse. 
And from this twofold love sprang deep joy. . . . 
There was a quiet avoidance of sin, which, so long 
as it lasted, no evil from without could trouble or 
sadden." 

bellarmine's estimate of the heavenly 
paradise. 

"But," exclaimed Bellarmine, "even had the 
earthly paradise been free from all ills and abounded 
in the greatest good of every kind, how much more 
exalted must be our conception of the heavenly 
paradise, which must be all the more happy that it 

* S. Basil, " Libro de Paradiso," quoted "by Bellarmine. 



2ST0VISSIMA. 177 

is the more sublime, all the better in every way 
that it was created for so much better beings? The 
heaven of the blessed must infinitely surpass in 
sublime elevation the Garden of Adam. The blessed 
in heaven, for whom sin is impossible, as well as 
death, are infinitely better than the inhabitants of 
Eden who were liable to sin and to die. We may, 
therefore, conclude that the heavenly paradise is not 
only free from all evil, but abounds with all good 
things, and that these are incomparably superior 
both in number and quality to such as were plenti- 
fully vouchsafed to the earthly Paradise." * 

It must suffice, so long as we are in this mortal 
body, that we recall to mind the pregnant words of 
St. John, that this glorious empire, destined to be 
man's true and everlasting home, has been created, 
ordered, and adorned by the hand of the Infinite 
Love "like a bride for the bridegroom." Yes, 
throughout its length and breadth, the land of the 
living is the masterpiece of the divine magnificence ; 
throughout its length and breadth it is the home 
of that society which is the mystic body of Christ 
Himself, purchased by His Blood, and made happy 
by every contrivance of His power. 

Within its vast limits range the myriads of those 
bright angelic spirits, whose companionship alone 
would constitute such bliss as no human experience 
may enable us to judge, and, just as they evermore 
serve and contemplate God, arranged in their nine 
mighty divisions, or shining innumerable armies, 
even so shall it be with the children of men. a The 
nations shall walk in the light of it," [the splendor 
of the Lamb.] "And there shall be no curse any 

* "De Merna Felicitate Sanctorum," L. IV, c. x. 



178 novissimA. 

more : but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall 
be in it, and His servants shall serve Him. 
And they shall reign for ever and ever." * 

Can all this lift up our thoughts above earth and 
its attachments, and fix our affections and hopes on 
the heavenly country? 

OUR LIFE ON EARTH THAT OF TRAVELERS IN THE 
DESERT. 

Whatever claim we may have to native land, or to 
any little scrap of earth inherited from our ancestors, 
or acquired by our own industry, we can enjoy its 
possession for only a few years. We are but trav- 
elers and pilgrims here below. Our road leads, in 
God's design, toward another, a happier, a greater, 
and a more lasting country. 

He who created the earth for man would have 
man while dwelling on it consider it to be only like 
a tent put up by the Arab in the sandy wilderness. 
It is a shelter from the heavy night-dews, a place of 
repose after the heat and fatigue of the preceding 
day, but it is to be struck ere the dawn, and the 
travelers have to pursue their journey. 

Do not fancy for a moment that there is exagger- 
ation in the metaphor of this earth's being a tent in 
the wilderness. The more the Christian mind re- 
flects on the reality of things, and takes in by slow 
degrees the unspeakable greatness of the other world, 
the more the littleness, the nothingness almost, of 
the things of this life — possessions, pleasures, pov- 
erty, privations, and sufferings, heroic deeds of 
charity, and self-sacrifice — force themselves upon the 
mind, and appear in the light of that eternity, and 

*Apoc, xxii, 3-5. 



. novissima. 179 

are measured by the scale of that infinitude, of which 
everything partakes in the land of the living. 

"The heaven of heavens is the Lord's: but the 
earth He has given to the children of men."* Yes, 
He has assigned this little globe, this speck amid 
the immensity of creation for man's temporary abode, 
while his trial lasts, and time is given him as the 
purchase-money with which to gain the "heaven of 
heavens." And here, in the plan of that Creator 
and Father of us all, comes in aptly the saying of 
St. Augustine already quoted : " Thou hast made us 
for Thyself, O Lord : and our heart knoweth no rest 
till it reposes in Thee." f He has destined 'us for 
the glory and bliss of the divine adoption and the 
Beatific Vision ; and, like water let down from its 
source on the eternal hills, we are impelled by all 
the forces of the moral world to seek and find our 
divine level. 

HEAVENWARD IMPULSES. 

This instinctive" impulse of the human soul found 
expression in the words of the Psalmist: "As the 
hart panteth after the fountains of w r aters : so my 
soul panteth after Thee, O God. My soul hath 
thirsted after the strong living God: when shall I 
come and appear before the face of God? 
Why art thou sad, O my soul, and why dost thou 
trouble me? Hope in God, for I will still give 
praise to Him: the salvation of my countenance and 
my God." X Was not this, also, the cry of St. Paul, 
in the wonderful passage of his Second Epistle to the 
Corinthians? — "In this also we groan, desiring to be 

* Psalm CXIII, 16. 

t " Lib. Confessionum," c. i : Fecisti nos, Domine, ad Te : et inquietum 
est cor nostrum donee requiescat in Te, 
t Psalm XLI, 1-6. 



180 srovissiMA. 

clothed upon With our habitation that is from heaven. 
. . . . For we who are in this tabernacle do 
groan, being bnrthened: because we would not be 
unclothed, but clothed upon, that that which is mor- 
tal should be swallowed up by life. Xow He, that 
maketh us for this very thing, is God, who hath 
given us the pledge of the Spirit. Therefore, having 
always confidence, knowing that while we are in the 
body, we are absent from the Lord (for we walk by 
faith and not by sight). AVe are confident and have 
a good will to be absent rather from the bcdy, and 
to be present with the Lord." * 

The practical fruit to be gathered from all these 
divine impulses toward the blessedness of the life to 
come is contained in the words by which the great 
Apostle concludes this passage : "And, therefore, we 
labor, whether absent or present, to please Him. 
For we must all be manifested before the judgment 
seat of Christ, that every one may receive the proper 
things of the body, according as he hath done, 
whether it be good or evil." 

To be sure, when we have passed beyond the veil, 
we shall find no difficulty in doing the divine will: 
" Turn, O my soul, into thy rest : for the Lord hath 
been bountiful to thee. He hath delivered my soul 
from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from falling. 
I will please the Lord in the land of the living." | 
The difficulty lies in our showing a generous will to 
please Him now. 

Let us be generous indeed! For who can begin 
to take the measure of His generosity when the time 
for repaying us comes ? 

*2 Cor., v, 2-8. f Psalm CXIV, 7-9. 



NOVISSIMA. 181 

It is well, however, to stimulate our generosity 
both of deed and of purpose by comparing all that 
is most magnificent in this life with the grandeurs 
and glories of that eternal empire destined to us. 

THE WISEST OF MEN FORGETTING HEAVEN FOR 
EARTH. 

We have, in the experience of King Solomon, a 
memorable example to warn us of the littleness and 
vanity of even widespread earthly dominion, of all 
the riches and pleasures of this life, and of the 
highest learning and wisdom undirected by the Spirit 
of God. Hear his own words : 

" I said in my heart : ' I will go and abound with 
delights, and enjoy good things.' And I saw that 
this also was vanity. Laughter I counted error: 
and to mirth I said: 'Why art thou vainly de- 
ceived?' I thought in my heart to withdraw my 
flesh from wine, that I might turn my mind to wis- 
dom, and might avoid folly, till I might see what 
was profitable for the children of men : and what 
they ought to do under the sun, all the days of their 
life." * 

This resolve marks the first period of the young 
king's reign, when his heart sincerely sought to 
know and follow the divine Will. Here now is the 
description of his downward career : 

"I made me great works, I built me houses, and 
planted vineyards. I made gardens and orchards, 
and set them with trees of all kinds. And I made 
me ponds of water, to water therewith the wood of 
the young trees. I got me men-servants and maid- 
servants, and had a great family : and herds of oxen, 
and great flocks of sheep, above all that were before 

* Ecclesiastes, ii, 1-3. 



182 KOVISSIMA. 

me in Jerusalem. I heaped together for myself 
silver and gold, and the wealth of kings and prov- 
inces. I made me singing men and singing women, 
and the delights of the sons of men, cups and vessels 
to serve to pour out wine. And I surpassed in 
riches all that were before me in Jerusalem : my 
wisdom [i. e., learning,] also remained with me. 
And whatsoever my eyes desired, I refused them 
not: and I withheld not my heart from enjoying 
every pleasure, and delighting itself in the things 
which I had prepared : and esteemed this my por- 
tion, to make use of my own labor." * 

The sequel indicates that the voluptuary's con- 
science troubled him in the midst of the paradise he 
had made himself. But the oscillations of Solomon's 
soul between unbounded enjoyment, "the vexation 
of mind" which follows guilty satiety, and the light 
of his faith pointing to the better road, only ended 
in his falling deeper and deeper in the slough in 
which he wallowed. He, long ages before Christ, 
came, as all our millionaire sensualists do, to ask 
himself the sceptic and materialist's question : 

" The death of man and of beasts is one, and the 
condition of them both is equal; as man dieth so 
they also die. All things breathe alike; and man 
hath nothing more than the beast : all things are 
subject to vanity. And I have found that nothing 
is better than for a man to rejoice in his work, and 
that this is his portion. For who shall bring him 
to know the things that shall be after him? " f 

Solomon went the way of the voluptuary, the 
cynic, and the materialist. Yet, the memory of his 
empire and its magnificence, as well as of his learn- 

* Ecclesiastes, ii, 4-10, * Ibidem, ii and iii, passim. 



KOVISSIMA. 183 

ing, has survived among the Semitic nations of Asia 
and Africa as those of a being who was superhuman 
in everything. Still, power, pleasure, pomp, and all 
the pride of kings he found to be but " vanity and 
vexation of spirit." 

THE EAPID RISE AND FALL OF EMPIRES. 

Vast as may be the empires founded by the s^ ord 
of the conqueror, or the policy and wisdom of states- 
men, they all fall away in due time and come to 
nothing. We travel over them, admire the cities 
with which they are studded, wonder at the mixed 
wealth and squalor of the various peoples, at the 
hideous misery underlying gigantic and thriving 
industries, at the armies which cannot secure peace, 
and the fleets which cannot secure plenty, even when 
their mints pour out unceasingly streams of gold 
and silver. 

And the marvel is, that nations, who believe in 
Christ and the promises of eternity, will persist in 
not believing the present life to be only a brief 
period of trial instituted to merit life eternal, and 
that this earth is for us but the tent put up in the 
wilderness for the night, and to be taken down with 
the first light of morning; that here is not our home, 
nor our true country, our final resting place — the 
lasting and glorious city where we shall enjoy the 
true life. 

The earthly Jerusalem, in her ruin and desolation, 
preserves many of the monuments of Solomon's 
provident rule and splendid munificence; her people 
cherish, as a pleasant and glorious dream of the past, 
the memory of all that he had done for the city and 
the nation. They were, mostly, the achievements of 



184 XOVISSI^A. 

his better days, when the light of heavenly -wisdom 
still shone npon his path. "What would he not have 
achieved, if pride, and the love of praise, and the 
still more fatal love of pleasure, had not made the 
great king oppress and impoverish his people to 
maintain the shameful and criminal extravagance of 
his court and household ? 

david's uprightness of heart. 

David — Solomon's father — had sinned, and sinned 
deeply; but he had sincerely repented, and accepted 
the bitter suffering sent as expiation. He could not 
long forget the God of his youth, who had taken him 
from the sheep-cot and made him shepherd of all 
Israel. Hence his cry: ""What have I in heaven? 
and besides Thee what do I desire upon earth? 
For Thee my flesh and my heart hath fainted away : 
Thou art the God of my heart, and the God that is 
my portion forever ! For behold they that go far 
from Thee shall perish. Thou hast destroyed all 
them that are disloyal to Thee. But it is good for 
me to adhere to niv God : to put my hope in the 
Lord God." * 

If such were the magnanimous sentiments of the 
shepherd king, "the Sweet Singer of Israel," who 
had not anticipated the life to come, and the beatitude 
of the clear light shed by Christ's teaching and that 
of the Christian ages, what should be our detachment 
from earth and all that it possesses of empire, wealth, 
power, and pleasures? What ideas should be those 
of a true Christian man on that other existence, in 
which God bestows upon us, as our eternal inherit- 
ance, the greatest, most immense, and most magnifi- 

* Psalm LXXII, 25-28. 



NOVISSIMA. 185 

cent of all His wcrks — tlie heaven of heavens, Him- 
self as our portion, to be most truly the God of our 
hearts, our own God for evermore, in the land of 
the living? 



CHAPTER XIII 



THE EMPIRE OF CHARITY 



THE BEAUTIFUL HARMONIES BETWEEN EARTH AND 
HEAVEN CREATED BY SUPERNATURAL LOVE. 

After having satisfied our minds as to the exist- 
ence of that divine society into which our dear 
departed enter after this life, and when they have 
purged off every remnant of sin's defilements, we 
may contemplate more leisurely and more profitably 
that heavenly city and its inmates. 

Let us, then, draw near in spirit to that true 
"Mount Sion, and to the city of the living God, the 
heavenly Jerusalem, and to the company of many 
thousands of angels ; and to the Church of the first- 
born, who are written in the heavens; and to God, 
the Judge of all; and to the spirits of the just made 
perfect; and to Jesus, the Mediator of the New 
Testament; and to the sprinkling of blood which 
speaketh better than that of Abel. . . . There- 
fore receiving an immovable kingdom, we have grace : 
whereby let us serve pleasing God with fear and 
reverence." * 

Ah! this glorious church of heaven, this city of 
God on high, seated upon the everlasting hills, far 

* Hebrews, Xii, 22-28. 



186 XOVISSIMA. 

and away above and beyond the remotest stars, have 
we not something of thy unity, thy universality, thy 
divine charities, thine eternity — aye, even of thy 
immovable security and peace, deeper and wider 
than the ocean — all foreshadowed in the Church 
Militant here below — in that city of God on earth, 
the mighty and fruitful parent of the Saints and 
citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem? 

THE TWO CITIES. 

As from some lofty mountain-peak between the 
two worlds, with the vision of the supernal Sion 
disclosed above, and the embattled multitudes own- 
ing Christ's spouse as their mother and mistress, 
encamped in the wilderness below, one can see that 
these are but the mortal and the immortal phases of 
God's kingdom. 

In the blessed city on high, where God, seen 
clearly, loved perfectly, possessed eternally, is the 
light and life of every human and angelic spirit 
there, I behold, with St. Paul, not only "many thou- 
sands of angels," but also their myriads of myriads 
in ninefold array standing adoringly around the in- 
tolerable splendors, ready to do His will; I see with 
them "the Church of the First-Born," the millions 
of millions whom the Son has redeemed, and who 
have gone before us to take possession of their 
inheritance. I see that altar, described by St. John, 
on which is the Lamb — ever slain, but still im- 
mortal — the sprinkling of whose blood "speaketh 
better than that of Abel." It crieth for forgiveness 
and mere}', not for punishment and retribution. It 
is poured out, only that in its diviDe fecundity men 
may be born anew as children of the living God. 



kovissimA. 187 

So, the mighty figure in heaven is that of "Jesus, 
the Mediator of the New Testament,'? the "Heir of 
all things/' the Brother of men, according to the 
flesh, the Adored of angels as God and Man, the 
Glory and the Joy of these exultant multitudes. 
Oh! what happiness, what peace, what unity, what 
love are there! 

THE CHARITY OF HEAVEN. 

What diversity of merits, what brotherly exulta- 
tion in the lowest angel and the lowliest Saint at the 
deserved glory of the highest and nearest to God ! 
What love and reverence in the bosom of the di- 
vinest seraph and the heart of her who is the Mother 
of the Lord, toward the babe dead in its baptismal 
innocence, or the sinner, like the thief crucified 
together with the Redeemer, and justified only at 
life's latest hour! For God is all in all to them. 
He it is who is loved by each in all, and by all in 
each; and who loves all and each with a charity 
which fills and overflows angels and men, and sur- 
rounds them on every side with an immensity of 
love and tenderness exceeding their need and 
capacity as far as the utmost limits of created space 
is distant from this spot of earth. So appears from 
afar the eternal city. 

And I look down upon this city of God on earth, 
this Church which, in every successive generation 
until the end of time, is appropriately called "the 
Church of the Latter Born;" and how closely her 
divine order, beauty, worship, and holiness make 
her resemble the city of God on high ! 



188 KOYISSIMA. 

THE CITY OF GOD OX EAETH. 

There she is dispersed all over the globe — "a 
great multitude which no man can number, of all 
nations, and peoples, and tribes, and tongues;" all 
professing one faith, reciting one creed, obeying one 
united hierarchy, under Christ's Vicar; all "stand- 
ing before the throne and in the sight of the Lamb." 
As in the heavenly, so in the earthly city, there is 
but one altar, upon which the "Lamb, slain from 
the beginning of the world" in the figurative victim 
of Abel's offering, slain on Calvary for the fulfill- 
ment of all prophecies and the completion of all 
atonement, is still slain unbloodily, but in very 
deed, a "perfect oblation," from the rising to the 
setting sun. 

To this Eternal Shepherd of souls, who "laid 
down His life for the sheep," belong the elect, the 
faithful servants of God, from Abel the Just to the 
latest born into the bliss of the life above. His 
fold, His Church, claims the Saints of the Old and 
those of the New Testament — those who closed their 
pilgrimage before the day of Calvary, and those who 
belong to all succeeding ages. Jew and Gentile are 
equally His. Jewish hands laid the foundations of 
the Church after Christ's day. We who have been 
called from among the Gentiles owe our regeneration 
to the Apostles of Israel. 

And, as in the Israel of old, so in the Church 
which succeeded to her inheritance, I see the armies 
of the living God, the angelic hosts, ever ascending 
and descending, encamped round about Christ's fold, 
wherever shepherds and flocks tarry on every land. 
The angelic citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem are 



KOVISSIMA. 189 

ever mixed up with their human brethren in exile — 
ever busy in ministering to them, watching over 
them with unwearied love, warding from them a 
thousand unseen dangers, prompting them to lofty 
aims and holy deeds by continual inspirations. 

We who have fallen upon evil days x like the 
servant of Eliseus of old, think God's Church beset 
with perils out of which no man may deliver her, 
surrounded on every side by the hosts of unbelief 
and hostile materialism. Each one of us sees "an 
army round about the city, and horses, and chariots. 77 
And in our despair we cry out : "Alas, alas, . . . 
what shall we do?" But if some prophet were near 
to open our eyes, what a sight would be that of 
the invisible and spiritual world we make so little 
account of? 

We, too, should behold "the mountain full of 
horses and chariots of fire round about." * Who 
can number the legions of these mighty and helpful 
spirits who, on every point of the globe, where the 
children of the Church are fighting the battles of the 
Lord, camp about every Christian home, and altar, 
and cemetery, protecting the living from evil and 
guarding the sacred ashes of the dead? 

THE BLESSED VISION OF PEACE. 

Divine constitution of that kingdom of God here 
below, how immovable it stands while revolution 
succeeds revolution, shaking the earth to its centre, 
blotting out empires, principalities, and peoples! 
The Church resembles the temple, beheld by St. 
John in his vision, where all is peace, praise, and 
thanksgiving evermore around the altar of the 
Lamb, as He remains a perpetual Oblation, the 

* 4 Kings, vi, 15-17. 



190 xoYissnrA. 

Blood offered by our divine Abel pleading inces- 
santly for all the needs of earth. So is it here 
below; as the sun unweariedly goes on his circuit 
round our globe, so does the Oblation of Christ's 
commemorative Sacrifice follow it in its rising over 
every land. There is no setting of our Sun of Jus- 
tice and Mercy. It is ever morning in the Catholic 
Church. Her morning Sacrifice is never inter- 
rupted. The river of purifying grace and vivifying 
love, which issues from beneath the altar of the 
ever-present Lamb, pours unceasingly round the 
globe like the streams of ocean, cleansing all, giving 
life to all. Though a all nations, and tribes, and 
peoples, and tongues," stand in prayer and praise in 
that Veiled Presence, theirs is one language, because 
the One Victim is the object of their worship and 
love. In the most glorious cathedral, as well as in 
the log-church of the American forest, or in the mis- 
sionary's open-air altar of the Brazilian desert or 
the South Sea Island, the worshipers know icho it 
is whose Blood cries there from earth to heaven. 

Oh! if we, who are still blundering along the 
road amid the mists of this cold world, could only 
see what is ever really passing beneath our eyes — 
this glorious and most blessed communion between 
the Saints on high and their pilgrim-brethren strug- 
gling onward in God's service ! 

THE ARMIES OF CHARITY. 

And, to the enlightened eye of faith, to the sense 
of the spiritual man, accustomed to look beneath the 
surface of things — how worthy of the admiration of 
heaven itself are these millions of holy souls, who 
labor obscurely to sanctify themselves, to live up to 



NOVISSIMA. 191 

Christ's teachings and examples, amid the seductions 
of the present life, in spite of the fearful corruption 
of mind and heart which carries souls away as in 
the triumphant waters of a mighty deluge! How 
many bishops and priests ; how many of the aristoc- 
racy of birth, and intellect, and wealth ; how many 
of the sons and daughters of toil in every walk of 
human industry; how many of the very poor in the 
crowded slums of our cities, are living the lives of 
angels! To every one of these souls are applicable 
the words of the great early martyr, the disciple of 
the Apostles: "Let me desire nothing of all that is 
seen and unseen, in order that I may gain the pos- 
session of Christ Jesus. . . . Let me open my 
soul to that pure Light which, if I only reach, will 
make me a man of God. . . . My Love hath 
died on the cross ; wherefore there remaineth in me 
no spark of desire for any other love. But the 
spirit which lifts me up as on a living wave, saith 
to me, ' Come to the Father ! ? " * 

Heaven, by the best writers of scientific and 
ascetic theology, has been called the kingdom of 
perfect charity. How could it be otherwise, since 
the Beatific Vision makes of the existence of every 
spirit there a life only differing in degree from God's 
own life — -one of supreme knowledge and supreme 
love of God Himself? We have, in a preceding 
chapter, endeavored to describe that divine charity, 
whose pulsations throb in the bosom of the Deity, as 
well as in that of every angel and Saint in these 
realms of eternal bliss. 

See now in what a wonderful manner charity in 
the Church here below seems a participation of the 
love which made God give His Only-Begotten Son to 

*St. Ignatius, Martyr, " Epistle to the Romans." 



192 KOVISSIMA. 

the cross for mankind, which makes the Son give us 
as our own possession both His Father and His own 
Spirit, together with all the infinite stores of glory 
and happiness of His own everlasting kingdom. 

The lesson of love which the history of revealed 
truth has taught, us means that the charity of the 
Triune God consisted in preparing man and angel to 
receive in eternity the gift of Himself — of all that 
He is and has. 

The great events which mark the course of His 
providence in the Old Dispensation and the New are 
the syllables by which we are taught to spell and to 
understand that love ineffable — that giving of Him- 
self to the world. 

So have ever done all those whose souls have 
been touched by the divine fire of His love ; so do 
they do now all over the world — they give them- 
selves and all that they have in loving their brethren 
for the love of God. 

APOSTLES OF EDUCATION AXD MERCY. 

Two great armies, whose legions cover both hemis- 
pheres, are devoted to the divine works of charity — 
that which devotes itself to education, and that which 
professes to remedy, as far as human devotion can, 
all the spiritual and bodily ills of suffering humanity. 
Both of these hosts of devoted men and women often 
undertake to accomplish both purposes — to form the 
young after the ideal of Christ, creating them in the 
living image of the Man-God, while ministering to 
the bodily needs of the poor and suffering. 

But, oh! how beautiful are the hosts, and how- 
blessed the labors, of these apostles of education! 
And, if possible, how dearer and nearer to the 



NOVISSIMA. 193 

sympathies and gratitude of the Christian people is 
that other and more numerous army of charity, prop- 
erly so-called ! Under a hundred different names — 
but all claiming to work under the immediate 
patronage and direction of the Mother of Christ, the 
Mother of Fair Love — these embattled legions of 
holy women, the elite of the race, and the beautiful 
flower of their sex, are night and day employed, 
among all the nations and tribes of earth, in doing 
the work of the divine Samaritan. 

HOAV CHARITY MULTIPLIES ITSELF. 

I write these pages in the capital of the land most 
famed for undeserved and interminable suffering 
in ancient or modern times. While the immense 
majority of the people are still heroically struggling 
for the most sacred of human rights, amid the ruins 
accumulated by centuries of strife between race and 
race, and creed and creed, the sons and daughters of 
the old and long-oppressed faith are wholly mindful 
of building up the moral ruin, of pouring oil and 
wine into the festering wounds of the people, of 
rearing the young to be true children of God, of 
teaching brother to love and to help brother, of 
making of earth an image of heaven. 

Sisters of Charity, Sisters of Mercy, Sisters of Our 
Lady of Loretto, Sisters of the Sacred Heart, and so 
many others — who can describe their labors, or esti- 
mate all the good they do ? Angels of God on earth — 
surely, were our eyes opened to see what is passing 
in our midst and all over the land, we should see 
these holy toilers in school-room, in orphan asylum, 
in hospital, in squalid hovel, at the bedside of the 
sick or the dying, attended by angels of light sent 



194 XOYISSIMA. 

from on high to help and sustain them in their min- 
istrations. \Yhere is the form of human suffering 
which these angelic women do not alleviate all 
around me in the great city and its beautiful and 
wide-spreading suburbs ? AYhere can human anguish 
and woe lurk, that their divine instinct will not detect 
it, and their divine tenderness find means of giving 
comfort and light to the soul in despair? 

Here they have created for the dying of every 
class, and clime, and creed, a hospice — a sort of 
outward court of heaven — where the weary and 
agonizing wayfarer, at the end of life's journey, enters 
and reposes in the very shadow of the peace eternal, 
with the doors of heaven almost visibly ajar, and 
angel-voices reaching him from within, and the 
radiance of the eternal day falling on head and 
heart. One needs no effort of the imagination to 
lift the veil, and to see the place filled with God's 
angels, with the blessed ones who have gone before, 
and who come to whisper peace and forgiveness and 
immortal hope to these dying ones, ere they accom- 
pany them to the judgment seat — the throne of 
mercy, rather. 

And here, again, another band of these angels 
of earth are solely devoted to sick and deformed 
infants — the ]30or waifs cast up on the shore by 
the ebb and flow of that tide of cruel selfishness, 
which all the charities of Christian civilization cannot 
dry up in great cities. No; Christian charity cannot 
extinguish sin upon earth, but it can labor and suffer, 
devote itself and die, to remedy the evils of sin. 

In another place — alas, in more than one place — 
the Sisters of Charity give their pure lives to the 
service of those of their own sex, who have fallen 



HOVISSIMA. 195 

victims to the seductions of evil. Oh! with what 
chaste and tender hands they touch and cure the 
wounds of these blighted and mortally stricken 
souls! With what a supernatural tenderness and 
infinite intelligence do they not labor to create 
a clean heart and a right spirit where evil had 
passed, destroying, one might think, the very roots 
of all goodness and holiness ! And, surely, here, 
too, God's holy angels delight to dwell, helping 
invisibly the divine work of sincere and lasting 
repentance. 

What shall we say of these homes of the blind, 
where children, girls, women — picked up from the 
bye-ways, rescued from poverty, and the helpless- 
ness of their own condition — are as tenderly reared, 
as carefully educated, as lovingly maintained to 
their dying day, as if they had been born to wealth 
and independence. Ah! they find here what is not 
unfrequently absent from the homes of the wealthiest 
and the greatest — treasures of love unfailing in their 
benefactresses and in the companions into whom the 
Sisters of Charity breathe their own spirit of divine 
unselfishness. 

Or what, again, should we not say of these 
nightly refuges where the homeless are so hospitably 
received, so generously entertained, so securely 
guarded amid the manifold temptations and perils 
of a great city? Even the penniless waif and the 
friendless wanderer are looked upon and entertained 
by these angels of mercy as if in each Christ Him- 
self knocked at the door, asking a place to lay down 
His head and be sheltered for the night. 

There is not a land bathed by sea or ocean, 
known to geoghraphers, which is not enlightened 



196 NOVISSIMA. 

and warmed by this active charity, whose spirit and 
labors ever tend to make of earth an image of 
heaven. 

But work what miracles we may by devotion and 
self-sacrifice, the transformation effected by this 
twofold apostleship only foreshadows dimly and 
most imperfectly the charity of the everlasting 
home. 

APOSTLESHIP OF MEN AND WOMEX OF THE WOULD. 

But you men and women of the world will say, 
that such charity as this, such devotion to good 
works, such a keen insight into the needs of the 
society around you, and the energy necessary to 
meet these needs, are things to be left to persons 
consecrated to God. They are all beyond your 
sphere of action, you think — certainly beyond your 
sphere of duty. 

Do not speak so positively, or hug so closely a 
false conviction. The field in which, outside of 
their own home, men and women of the world, 
married and unmarried, can exercise a true apostle- 
ship, and one most fruitful in our day, is simply 
immense. We have known, on both sides of the 
Atlantic, a multitude of such apostles; but we 
point out only one — one already gone to her 
earthly reward. 

AN AXGEL OF EAPTH. 

Yes; this young woman of the world is gone all 
too soon to heaven — so fruitful was her young life 
in the most beautiful domestic virtues, and in heroic 
labors undertaken for the spiritual good of those 
around her. Herself the daughter of parents who 



NOVISSIMA. 197 

never neglected an opportunity to do God's work in 
souls, and reared amid a household where God was 
ever first, last, and middlemost in the minds and 
hearts of all, and where all the sweet charities of 
religion, and home, and society were performed as a 
daily offering to Him, the young maiden was the 
servant of the neighboring poor, the devoted teacher 
of the children of the African slaves, the soul of 
every good work in her own native city. A wife 
and a mother, torn away from the parents she 
worshiped, the brothers and sisters and friends who 
idolized her — her young heart riven by the loss of 
her first-born babe — she rose above all her sorrow's, 
as she was on her way to her husband's far-off 
home, to devise plans for restoring the reign of 
religion and the splendor of suppressed religious 
worship in that God-forsaken land. Dearly as she 
loved her own country, then plunged in the horrors 
of the most gigantic civil war of modern times, and 
strong as was her affection for her own afflicted 
countrymen, the spiritual desolation and debase- 
ment of the people to whom she was going engrossed 
all the zeal of her lofty spirit and enlightened piety. 

The mortal homesickness which oppressed her, 
the almost uninterrupted series of illness which 
impaired or paralyzed her bodily strength, could not 
prevent the generous young heart, to which the 
cause of God was as the breath of life, to undertake 
and to accomplish for the populations around her 
everything which could renew effectually their moral 
and intellectual condition. 

How the name of the young stranger, "The 
Angel/' as the grateful natives called her, flew far 
and wide, and bore a blessed influence with it! 



198 KOTISSIMA. 

But, lo! while just mourning for the death of her 
noble father, and a few weeks after the birth of her 
third child, the yellow fever invades the city, and 
attacks her own household. The servants who are 
spared by the plague fly in terror to the mountains ; 
the others are lying at death's door. She begs to 
be taken to them. The physician resists. a You 
are very weak and unwell yourself, madam," he 
says, "and you are not acclimated. That you will 
take the sickness, predisposed as you are, is almost 
a certainty; and it is equally certain that you will 
die of it, if you take it. You owe your life to your 
husband and children. It would be very wrong to 
expose it." 

So reasoned he. But the little apostle was only 
mindful of what she had been taught, of her duty 
to God and to immortal souls, when no other 
spiritual help w r as nigh. "I only ask myself," she 
replied, "what mamma would do, if she were in my 
place. I know she would not let her servants die 
without preparing and strengthening them, if she 
were here." And so the generous husband did 
not withstand her purpose, and the physician had 
to yield. They bore her to where the fever- 
stricken were lying. With a mother's tenderness 
she cheered them, and lifted their souls to God. She 
had been an angel of light and consolation before 
this at many a death-bed in that city, and had 
brought the thought of the dread judgment, with 
the fear and love of the just Judge, to souls that 
had utterly forgotten Him. And now her whole 
heart went out to the dying ones of her own 
household. 



KOVISSIMA. 199 

It was her supreme effort. The plague forthwith 
seized herself, and she died, blessing and blessed, 
leaving her babes motherless, her husband incon- 
solable, the city in mourning, and the whole country 
bereft of her bright examples and God-given zeal. 

And the mother, of whose very heart she was a 
part, though thus doubly widowed and bereaved, 
never once regretted that she had given her oldest 
and dearest to do God's work in that distant land. 

So much will true hearts undertake and do for 
God and for the souls who are dear to Him while 
still travelers only on the road to heaven. And if 
such be some, and some only, of the innumerable 
instances of supernatural charity which in every 
generation grace this earth of ours, what must be 
the charities of that most blessed society above? 
Who can conceive the ardor with which they ever- 
more yearn and pray for our salvation here below? 
Who can describe all the loveliness of that charity 
which binds them to each other, and makes the social 
intercourse of the heavenly city a source of such 
exquisite happiness? 



200 KOVISSIMA. 



CHAPTER XIV 



THE BELIEF IN THE RESURRECTION OF THE 
BODY. 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHEIST THE FOUNDATION 
OF OUR FAITH. 

The Christian religion is supernatural. Its great 
Founder, Jesus Christ, unites in His Person both 
the divine and the human natures. This stupen- 
dous union is supernatural. His conception and 
His birth were supernatural. The three years of 
His public or missionary life were filled with ex- 
traordinary miracles — supernatural in their agency 
and tendency. His death, repeatedly foretold in its 
principal circumstances, was attended by the same 
supernatural occurrences. The sun was darkened, 
although there was no eclipse ; the earth was shaken ; 
the dead arose and appeared to many in Jerusalem. 

He had also foretold that on the third day after 
His Crucifixion He should arise from the grave in 
the fullness of a new life. This prediction, known 
to His enemies, the Pharisees, to the Roman author- 
ities who had consented to His Crucifixion, and also 
to His Disciples, caused the former to set a mili- 
tary guard over His sepulchre, in order to prevent 
the possibility of a fraud. And yet one does not 
see how, in the case of a Man publicly executed as a 
criminal, and well known to the people and the mag- 
istrates, a fraud was possible in the present instance. 



^TOYISSIMA. 201 

The people had beheld his death ; they had seen the 
centurion, sent to examine and certify the fact of His 
death, cause one of his soldiers to pierce the dead 
body of Christ with a lance. This assurance, made 
doubly sure, was reported to the authorities. Mean- 
while, the governor authorized, late on the eve of 
the great Jewish Sabbath, the body to be taken down 
from the cross, embalmed, and entombed, with the 
precaution that the tomb should be sealed and jeal- 
ously guarded. 

Nevertheless, on the third clay Christ arose; 
appeared to His Apostles and Disciples; remained 
among them for forty entire days, conversing with 
them, teaching them; and then, in their presence, 
ascended visibly into heaven. 

To this double fact of His death and Resurrec- 
tion, the men and women who had beheld it bore 
solemn and repeated witness at the risk of being 
scourged publicly, of being excommunicated by their 
co-religionists, banished from their own country — 
most of them sealing their testimony with their lives. 

We are bound to believe such witnesses. We are 
bound to believe the mighty fact so attested, espe- 
cially as their witness was also attended with mira- 
cles publicly, solemnly performed as the authentic 
sign of God's confirmation of the truth of their 
assertion. 

In the light of these mighty facts, which happened 
in Jerusalem more than 1850 years ago, we are now 
to study the consequent fact of the general resurrec- 
tion of all mankind at the end of time. 

THOSE W T HO EOSE FEOM THE DEAD BEFOEE CHEIST. 

It was not altogether a new doctrine which Christ 
taught when He first spoke of a general resurrection 



202 KOVISSBIA. 

of the dead. The care "with which all peoples, in 
historic as well as prehistoric times, buried their 
dead, embalmed them (as in Egypt), treasured up 
their ashes, and jealously watched over these dear 
remains of their departed, would seem to be no 
unconvincing argument that they believed that life 
should one day re-visit this sacred deposit of the 
grave. 

Among the chosen race — the descendants of Abra- 
ham — selected to guard the truths of the primitive 
revelation, together with the promise of the future 
Redeemer, and the faith in the restoration to be 
effected by Him, the belief in a resurrection was 
carefully inculcated. Still, whatever may have 
been, on this point, the faith inherited from ante- 
diluvian ages, or bequeathed by Xoe to his family, 
it is certain that, in course of time, the belief in a 
resurrection was limited to the just alone. David 
Kimchi, one of the most authorized teachers of the 
Synagogue, affirms that "it is disputed among our 
sages " whether the resurrection shall be general; 
but adds that the "ways" or style of the Talmud 
favor the belief that it is the just only who will rise. 
Weber, in modern times, says that, although the 
resurrection of the dead is the thirteenth article of 
the Jewish creed, the doctrine of a resurrection of 
both good and bad cannot be proved from the Tal- 
mud or Midrashim. He confirms this assertion by 
quoting the words of Mainonides: " The resurrec- 
tion of the body is a fundamental article of Moses, our 
teacher, .... but it only belongs to the just." * 
"We know that the Sadducces denied altogether the 
resurrection. 

* Weber, "Altsynag. Theol.," p. 372, as quoted in the "Catholic Dic- 
tionary;" art. "Resurrection." 



NOVISSIHA. 203 

The rebuke administered by Christ to these here- 
tics of His day is recorded by St. Luke: "Jesus 
said to them : * The children of this world marry, and 
are given in marriage. But they that shall be ac- 
counted worthy of that world, and of the resurrection 
from the dead, shall neither be married nor take 
wives. Neither can they die any more: for they 
are equal to the angels, and are the children of God, 
being the children of the resurrection. 7 Now, that 
the dead rise again, Moses also showed, at the bush, 
when he called the Lord : The God of Abraham, and 
the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For He is 
not the God of the dead, but of the living : for all 
live to Him." * 

In the Old Testament two of the great Prophets 
who bore in their lives and their very name a close 
resemblance to our Lord — Elias* and Eliseus — each 
raised the dead to life. And it is recorded of the 
lifeless remains of the latter, that the dead body of a 
man being cast by accident into his tomb, was forth- 
with restored to life. Thus the souls of three per- 
sons, at least, among the people of God in pre- 
Christian times, were miraculously recalled from the 
other world to inhabit the bodies they had before 
animated. In Christ's Transfiguration the two great 
Prophets of the Old Law — Moses and Elias — were 
summoned by the Lord of Glory to bear Him com- 
pany and witness before the three most beloved and 
most privileged of His Apostles. Moreover, ere He 
consummated His own mortal life, He was pleased 
to raise two persons from the dead — the son of the 
widow of Nain, and His own devoted Disciple and 
friend, Lazarus. 

* St. Luke, xx, 34-38. 



204 KOVISSIMA. 

CHEIST RECALLING MEN FROM BEYOND THE TOMB. 

Most memorable and most touching was the scene 
enacted near the tomb of the latter. To the bereaved 
and weeping Mary, falling at the Master's feet and 
saying, "Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother 
had not died," He replied, first, by the manifesta- 
tion of deep human sympathy. "Where have you 
laid him?" he says to the Jews, who wept with 
the sisters. "Lord, come and see," they simply 
answer. "And Jesus wept. The Jews therefore 
said: ( Behold how He loved him.' But some of 
them said : ' Could not He that opened the eyes of 
the man born blind have caused that this man 
should not die?'" They had now come to the 
rocky sepulchral chamber in the hill-side, and 
removed the stone which closed the door. The 
elder sister, Martha, in her despair, or half-faith, as 
the odor of advanced putrefaction filled the air, 
exclaimed : " Lord, by this time he stinketh, for he 
is now a corpse of four days." And yet, but a few 
moments before, and ere they had left the house, 
Jesus had said to her: "I am the Resurrection and 
the Life : he that believeth in Me, although he be 
dead, shall live. And every one that liveth and 
believeth in Me shall not die forever. Believest 
thou this?" 

Surely, we believe Him to be the Lord and Life- 
giver, who is the Master of heaven and hell, the 
Judge who holds the keys both of the life eternal 
and of the everlasting death. From mere temporal 
death He can and will restore the departed at the 
prayer of living faith, and when it is for the glory of 
His Father. From the eternal death He will pre- 
serve all who believe in Him with that same living 



NOVISSIMA. 205 

faith which binds the believer to the Author and 
Finisher of his faith in the chains of loving fidelity. 

He "weeps" there, above the grave of Lazarus, 
and almost on the very eve of His own cruel death, 
at the thought of how little the miracle He was 
about to perform, and the shedding of His atoning 
Blood, would avail to open the eyes, to soften the 
hearts, or save the souls of the proud and self- 
justified generation around Him. 

Still, he proclaims, amid the "trouble" of His 
Spirit, and the sweet human tears of His brotherly 
sympathy: "I am the Resurrection and the Life. 
. . . . Belie vest thou this ? " And then comes 
the command of Him, whose word created the 
world: "Lazarus, come forth! And presently he 
that had been dead came forth." * 

And in the face of all these facts, we who profess 
to believe in Christ, and cherish for the Bible an 
almost idolatrous reverence, do not hesitate to say, in 
speaking of the life to come, of heaven and of hell : 
"What do we know about a future state? Who has 
ever come back from the regions of death to tell us 
about it?" 

CHRIST HIMSELF CAME BACK FROM THE OTHER 
WORLD. 

But He — the Resurrection and the Life — did 
Himself taste of the bitterness of death, and dwell 
amid its dark shadow, visit and tarry with those 
who, after this life, had been exiled from heaven, till 
He had purchased for them in His own Blood the 
right to enter there. He returned to His sorrowing 
Mother and His grief-stricken Disciples, from the 

* St. John, xi, 4344. 



206 XOVISSIMA. 

very jaws of the grave, to converse during forty 
clays with tliem both of the kingdom they were to 
found for Him on earth, and of the kingdom of 
heaven, of which He was soon to take possession in 
their name. 

Do we believe in Him? Do we give faith to the 
witnesses of His Resurrection, the parents of the 
Christian world, the founders of the civilization of 
which we are so boastful? And shall we continue 
to say: " Who has come bach from beyond the grave 
to tell us of the other world?" 

The great supernatural fact of Christ's Resurrec- 
tion is the corner-stone of our faith and hope as 
regards the life to come. It was felt to be so by the 
men to whom He had committed the charge of 
making the religion of the Gospel the religion of the 
world. 

THE WITNESSES TO THE FACT OF HIS EESUERECTIOX. 

Let us go back a few moments to Jerusalem, to 
the cradle of Christianity, just as the Apostles, filled 
with the Spirit of God, issue forth the first time 
from the upper chamber, and through their spokes- 
man, Peter, dare to preach Christ Crucified and 
risen from the dead. Hear the first witness of the 
Fisherman of Galilee to the divinity of his Master 
and the reality of the Resurrection : 

"Ye men of Israel/' Peter exclaims, "hear these 
words : Jesus of Nazareth, a Man approved of God 
among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which 
God did by Him in the midst of you, as you also 
know : this same Being delivered up, by the deter- 
minate counsel and foreknowledge of God, you by 
the hands of wicked men have crucified and slain : 



KOVISSIMA. 207 

whom God hatli raised up, having loosed the sorrows 
of hell, as it was impossible that He should be 
holden by it." * He quotes, as bearing on the 
Resurrection of Christ, the famous prophecy of 
David in Psalm XV. 

" Foreseeing this, he spoke of the Resurrection of 
Christ; for neither was He left in hell, neither did 
His flesh see corruption. This Jesus hath God 
raised again, whereof all we are witnesses." f 

MIRACLES CONFIRMING THEIR WITNESS. 

The conversion and baptism of three thousand 
persons w T ere the result of this first discourse on 
Christ Crucified and risen from the dead, delivered 
publicly in the city which had so recently been the 
theatre of His cruel death, and had afterwards been 
startled by the announcement of His return to life. 

These were facts fresh in the memory of all. 

Then came the great miracle — the cure of the 
cripple at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple, per- 
formed in sight of the multitude by St. Peter and 
St. John. 

"A certain man who was lame from his mother's 
womb was carried, whom they laid every day at the 
gate of the Temple, which is called Beautiful, that 
he might ask of them who went into the Temple." 

" Silver and gold have I none," St. Peter says to 
the expectant beggar. " But what I have I give 
thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, 
arise, and walk ! " 

The man forthwith leaps to his feet, and follows 
the Apostles into the Temple, " walking, and leap- 
ing, and praising God," in the ecstatic consciousness 
of the new powers bestowed on his limbs. 

* Acts, li, 22-24. t Ibidem, 31-32. 



208 HOVtSSIMA. 

The vast portico of Solomon, with its colonnades 
and the adjoining court, is soon filled with the won- 
dering crowd, who throng to gaze upon the restored 
cripple and his benefactors. 

Again Peter addresses them : 

" Ye men of Israel, why wonder you at this? or 
why look you upon us, as if by our strength or 
power we had made this man to walk? The God 
of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of 
Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified His 
Son Jesus, whom you indeed delivered up and denied 
before the face of Pilate. . . . The Author of 
Life you killed, whom God hath raised from the 
dead, of which we are witnesses. " 

Ere Peter had done speaking "the priests, and 
the officer of the Temple, and the Sadducees, came 
upon them, being grieved that they taught the 
people, and preached in Jesus the Resurrection from 
the dead. And they laid hands upon them, and put 
them in hold till the next day, for it was now 
evening." 

On the morrow there was a great assembly of the 
priests and magistrates under the High Priest 
And again Peter, "filled with the Holy Ghost," 
raises his voice: "Ye princes of the people and 
ancients hear : If we this clay are examined concern- 
ing the good deed done to the infirm man, by what 
means he hath been made whole, be it known to you 
all, and to all the people of Israel : that by the name 
of our Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you 
crucified, whom God hath raised from the dead, 
even by Him this man standeth before you whole. 
This is the stone which was rejected by you the 
builders, which is become the head of the corner." * 

* Acts, iv, 8-11. 



KOVISSIMA. 209 

Vainly did the Jewish Council forbid the Apos- 
tles "that they speak no more in this name to any 
man." The fear of imprisonment or of the infamy 
of public scourging could not seal the lips of men 
whose sole purpose was to fulfill the divine mission 
intrusted to them. Nor did the terror inspired by 
the persecutors prevent the increase of the multitude 
of believers. The miracle-working power granted 
to the Apostles as the divine seal of the truth of 
what they preached concerning Jesus of Nazareth, 
His divinity, and His Resurrection from the dead, 
was productive of the most marvelous results. 
" They brought forth their sick into the streets, and 
laid them on beds and couches, that when Peter 
came, his shadow at the least might overshadow any 
of them, and they might be delivered from their 
infirmities. And there came also together to Jeru- 
salem a multitude out of the neighboring cities, 
bringing sick persons and such as were troubled 
with unclean spirits : who were healed." * 

THE WORLD HAD TO BELIEVE SUCH WITNESS. 

Here was a new Power, that of Jesus of Nazareth 
crucified and risen from the dead, which asserts Itself 
as divine. It claims the adhesion of the Jewish 
Church authorities, inasmuch as Jesus had constantly 
declared. that He was the Messiah promised in the 
sacred books of the Jews and expected by the whole 
nation. The Jewish Church withstanding the evi- 
dence of a claim supported by this display of super- 
natural power, has no alternative but to persecute 
the new faith. 

The Apostles are cast into prison. "But an angel 
of the Lord by night opening the doors of the 

* Acts, V, 15-16. 



210 KOVTSSIMA. 

prison, and leading them out, said : ( Go, and stand- 
ing speak in the Temple all the words of this life/ " * 

The Council held on the morrow was a most 
memorable one. "You have tilled Jerusalem with 
your doctrine," says the High Priest to the coura- 
geous preachers of the Resurrection, "and you have 
a mind to bring the Blood of this Man upon us. 
But Peter and the Apostles, answering, said : ' \fe 
ought to obey God rather than man. The God of 
our fathers hath raised up Jesus, whom you put 
to death, hanging Him upon a tree. . . . We 
are witnesses of these things/ " f 

The influence of Gamaliel could not prevent these 
purblind rulers of the Jews from inflicting on the 
Apostles the degrading punishment of the rod. But 
attempted degradation only glorifies the truth, and 
humiliation serves only to increase tenfold the energy 
of its apostles. "And they indeed went from the 
presence of the Council rejoicing that they were 
accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of 
Jesus. And every day they ceased not, in the 
Temple, and from house to house, to teach and preach 
Christ Jesus." % 

ST. STEPHEN BEHOLDS CHEIST IX GLORY. 

The drama went on increasing in tragic interest 
till its first act ended with the death of St. Stephen, 
the first to bear solemn witness by his death to the 
sincerity of his convictions and the divinity of Christ 
Crucified. "A great multitude of the priests also 
obeyed the faith." || Most eloquent was the dis- 
course addressed by the youthful martyr to the Great 
Council and in answer to his accusers. At its close, 

* Acts, v, 19-20. X Acts, v, 41-42. 

t Ibidem, v, 28-32. II Ibidem, vi, 7. 



KOYISSIMA. 211 

and while the members of the assembly writhed 
under his inspired denunciations, "he, being full of 
the Holy Ghost, looking up steadfastly to heaven, 
saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right 
hand of God. And he said: ' Behold I see the 
heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the 
right hand of God ! " * 

Shall we, of this nineteenth century after Christ, 
when we hear His divinity proclaimed, the existence 
of a supernatural heaven taught as the consequence 
and consummation of His redemption, and the res- 
urrection of all flesh set forth as founded on His 
Resurrection — shall we, like the Jews in the Great 
Council, stop our ears, cry out against this sublime 
doctrine, and violently assail the teacher? 

Let us pause, rather, while we read and meditate 
this sole early and authentic record of the first 
growth of Christian faith and life in the city of 
David, and reflect that the existence of a future 
world, the glory of a heaven in which Christ arisen 
from the dead thrones in His humanity and divinity, 
were the cardinal doctrines to which the truth of 
such heroic and persistent witness was borne. 

The return to life from the realms of death, the 
restoration of the body to new life, the Resurrection — 
such are the doctrines, the dogmatic facts- — real 
^historical facts, before they were inculcated as doc- 
trines — which stand face to face with us at the very 
cradle of Christianity. 

With the eyes of the inspired Stephen, as he is 
about to seal his witness with his blood, we shall 
look into that heaven into which he is about to enter, 
and gaze fondly on that promised " glory " and on 

* Acts, tii, 55. 



212 HOVISSIMA. 

"Jesus standing at the right hand of God." We 
shall say with him now, as we hope to say with our 
latest breath : " Lord Jesus, receive nry soul ! " * 
For He, too, is the God of the "departing;" and 
death is only the gateway to the life in which He 
awaits us. 

ST. PAUL FORCED TO BELIEVE STEPHEN AFTER 
SLAYIXG HIM. 

But there stood one by those who stoned Stephen 
to death— one who fanatically rejoiced in the stoning, 
and heard the martyr's last prayer. To him, at that 
moment, Stephen appeared to be only a blasphemer — 
an enemy of God and of God's chosen people. 
With all the ardor of a youthful spirit bent on crush- 
ing out this budding heresy — as he deemed it to be — 
Saul, a disciple of Gamaliel, sets forth for Damascus, 
empowered by the High Priest and the Jewish magis- 
trates to do for the Apostles and Disciples of Christ 
what he had just done for Stephen in Jerusalem. 

On the road, amid his armed escort, a divine 
power casts him to the earth, Christ appears to him, 
converts him, changes him from a persecutor into the 
most energetic and eloquent of Apostles. 

So to Saul, at the very height of his incredulity 
and anti-Christian hatred, One comes back from the 
dead — from the land of the living, rather — to touch 
with His hand the eyes, the head, the heart, of the 
persecutor — to open to his soul a new world of truth, 
new aspirations, affections, and supernatural achieve- 
ments. 

st. paul's witness. 

Let us hear this mighty witness, also, as he testi- 
fies about the Resurrection of the dead and the 

* Acts, vii, 58. 



KoyissimA. 213 

existence of that life eternal beyond the grave. He 
is writing to the new Christians of Corinth, the most 
beautiful and the most infamous city in the heathen 
world : 

"I make known unto you, brethren, the Gospel 
which I preached to you, which also you have 
received, and wherein you stand ; by which also you 
are saved, if you hold fast after what manner I 
preached unto you, unless you have believed in vain. 

" For I delivered unto you first of all, that which 
I also received: how that Christ died for our sins, 
according to the Scriptures : and that He was buried, 
and that He rose again the third day, according to 
the Scriptures : and that He was seen by Cephas, and 
after that by the Eleven : Then was He seen by 
more than five hundred brethren at once, of whom 
many remain until this present, and some are fallen 
asleep. After that He was seen by James, then by 
all the Apostles. And last of all, He was seen also 
by me, as by one born out of due time. . . . 

" Now, if Christ be preached that He arose again 
from the dead, how do some among you say that 
there is no resurrection of the dead? For, if there 
be no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not 
risen again. And if Christ be not risen again, then 
is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. 
Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God: 
because we have given testimony against God, that 
He hath raised up Christ, whom He hath not raised 

up, if the dead rise not again Then 

they also, that are fallen asleep in Christ, are per- 
ished. 

"If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we 
are of all men most miserable." * 

*1 Cor., xv, 1-19. 



214 KOYISSIMA. 

The difficulty opposed by mere reason to the 
possibility of a resurrection is here met without 
flinching. Paul and his fellow-Apostles are wit- 
nesses to the fact of having seen Christ living again 
in the body after His death upon the cross. As to 
the fact of this death, the Apostles are not alone to 
testify to it. All Jerusalem beheld it. The High 
Priests, the magistrates, the Pharisees, as well as the 
Sadducees — the whole nation, in a manner, concur in 
affirming that Jesus of Nazareth died on the cross, 
was taken lifeless from it, and buried. This fact 
the Roman governor, in his turn, certified to the 
emperor at Rome. 

IMPOSSIBILITIES. 

It would seem as if the Redeemer permitted the 
death of Lazarus to happen a few days only before 
His own, and that the brother of Martha and Mary 
should be buried amid the lamentations of his 
numerous unbelieving friends from the neighboring 
capital, and that he should remain dead four entire 
days, before the other public occurrence of his being 
recalled to life — summoned to come publicly forth 
from the tomb — should have startled the entire 
community. 

Those who had not seen Lazarus dead, but who 
believed in the truth of the common report of his 
demise and burial, refused to believe in his coming 
to life again. But all such as had witnessed his 
burial, and again beheld his wonderful restoration 
to life, could not resist the evidence of their own 
senses. They could no more deny either the fact 
of their friend's death and burial or that of his 
coming forth from the grave, its putrefaction, and 



KOVISSIMA. 215 

bandages, than tne man born blind and cured by 
Christ could deny the fact of his own identity, or 
that his parents, when questioned, could gainsay the 
fact that he had been born blind, and had continued 
so up to the day when the hand of the Master 
touched his sightless orbs and gave them light 
and life. 

Vain is the objection of the materialist, the ration- 
alist, the unbeliever — that the resurrection is against 
the laws of nature; a thing impossible. What is 
impossible, what is against all the laws of rational 
nature, is not to credit the evidence of one's senses 
when one sees the man, publicly buried amid the 
grief of his own family and the lamentations of 
neighbors and friends, coming forth, after an in- 
terval of three or four days, from the corruption of 
the grave and standing a living, speaking, healthful 
man before the eyes of the crowd. What revolts all 
the instincts of human nature is to say — when a 
cripple who, since infancy, since the hour of his 
birth, never was able or was known to make a single 
step unaided, whose limbs were manifestly unfit for 
all purposes of motion, stands up at the sound of a 
single word, walking, leaping, running — the thing is 
impossible! 

He, in whose ever-blessed name such miracles 
were performed in the sight of an entire people, had 
said that He would voluntarily submit to die a 
shameful death, and, that by His own divine power, 
He would rise and return to life again. He arose, 
according to His promise; He clothed with pre- 
ternatural courage the poor fishermen who were His 
Disciples ; He gave them the power to perform such 
miracles as those described — all for the sole purpose 



216 XOVISSIMA. 

of proving that He was truly God, and that he was 
truly risen from the dead. 

The world — the elite of the Roman empire, of the 
human race — did believe both of these things on the 
faith of such miracles. It would have been the 
most stupendous of miracles to have so believed 
without any real miracle. 

We, at this day, nineteen centuries after Christ, 
believe that He has so risen, and that He is very 
God. On the strength of His Resurrection and of 
His word, we believe that, at the end of time, all 
men shall rise as He did; and in the bodies in 
which they lived, labored, and died, appear in 
judgment. 

And what a magnificent horizon this belief opens 
up to the mind, the hopes, and the affections of man ! 
How this belief in the resurrection of the dead har- 
monizes the past and the present of our race with 
the future — the trials and sacrifices and heroic labors 
of a virtuous, a saintly life, with the greatness, the 
goodness, the justice of God, and the yearnings of 
man's own soul ! 

"Now Christ is risen from the dead, the first 
fruits of them that sleep." So death, in this pros- 
pect of the life to come, is but a momentary, or, at 
most, a brief " sleep," as compared to the countless 
cycles of the eternal life which follows. Hence, the 
sweet name of cemeteries (a Greek term) given from 
the birth of Christianity to the resting places of the 
dead. All who died in the peace of Christ were 
laid to sleep, to rest there, tenderly, reverently, with 
their faces looking up to that heaven from which, in 
His own time, the Judge would surely come. His 
sign, or His name, marked the tomb to which the 



NOVISSIMA. 217 

sleeper was consigned. "For by a man [Adam] 
came death, and by a man [Christ, the second 
Adam,] the resurrection of the dead. And as in 
Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made 
alive. But every one in his own order, the first 
fruits, Christ: then they that are of Christ, who have 
believed in His coming. Afterwards the end: when 
He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God and 
the Father." * 



CHAPTER XV. 



THE NEW BIRTH OF MANKIND. 



And darkness and doubt are now flying away, 

No longer I roam in conjecture forlorn; 
So breaks on the traveler, faint and astray, 

The bright and the balmy effulgence of morn. 
See truth, love, and mercy in triumph descending, 

And nature all glowing in Eden's first bloom ; 
On the cold cheek of Death smiles and roses are blending, 

And beauty immortal awakes from the tomb. 

— Beattie. 

We have the faculty, when imagination prompts 
or feeling strongly moves us, of transporting our- 
selves in thought across seas and continents to the 
remotest parts of the globe, where is the home we 
left awhile, and where our dear ones dwell. So can 
we, when we please, pass over centuries upon cen- 
turies in time, and fancy ourselves present at some 
mighty event in which our interests and affections 
are deeply involved. 

*lCor., XV, 21-24. 



218 ^OVISSIMA. 

We believe in the resurrection of the dead at the 
end of time, as Christ, our Lord, has taught us. 
Let us, for one hour at least, shut out the world 
around us, and force ourselves to be present in spirit 
at the last tremendous assizes, in which all augels 
and men shall stand before the judgment seat of the 
Creator and Lord of all things. 

We may take the words of Paul and of his Master 
to guide us in this contemplation, and to make us 
feel sure that what we are about to see and hear is 
not a dream. 

THE RESURRECTION OF LIFE. 

" Behold, I tell you a mystery," the great Apostle 
says to his sorely-tried Corinthians. "We shall all 
indeed rise again, biit we shall not all be changed. 
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last 
trumpet : for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead 
shall rise again incorruptible: and so we shall be 
changed. For this corruptible must put on incor- 
ruption: and this mortal must put on immortality. 
And when this mortal hath put on immortality, then 
shall come to pass the saying that is written : 
' Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death, where 
is thy victory? O Death, where is thy sting?' " * 
Here are the words of the Master Himself: 
"As the Father raiseth up the dead, and giveth 
life; so the Son also giveth life to whom He pleascth. 
Amen, amen, I say unto you, that the 
hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear 
the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall 
live. For as the Father hath life in Himself; so He 
hath given to the Son also to have life in Himself. 
And He hath given Him pow T er to do judgment, 

*1 Cor., xv, 51-55. 



KOVISSIMA. 219 

because He is the Son of Man. Wonder not at this : 
for the hour cometh wherein all that are in the 
graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God. 
And they that have done good things shall come forth 
unto the resurrection of life ; but they that have 
done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment." 

Let us, first, consider a the Resurrection of Life." 
We shall treat afterward of "the Resurrection of 
of Judgment." 

ANTECEDENT EVENTS. 

As we have said repeatedly, we must, in dwelling 
on all that relates to God's final retribution to both 
the wicked and the just, enlarge our minds and con- 
sider everything in the light of the infinite and the 
eternal. 

Of the series of events, more or less dimly fore- 
shadowed in Scripture, and discussed by the most 
authorized interpreters, which are to take place 
before the general resurrection, we need say nothing 
here. It is sufficient for our purpose that the 
resurrection itself, the subsequent judgment, and the 
separation between the just and the lost, have been 
described by our Lord and His Apostle with a 
minuteness of detail that leaves the intellect and 
imagination no room for misconception or false 
fancies. 

Time, as we now reckon it, by the measure of 
human life and the revolutions of our globe, will 
have given way to a very different period of dura- 
tion, with far different elements of calculation. Ere 
the Judge makes His appearance, every human being 
on the surface of the globe will have closed his 
earthly career, and passed beyond the limits of time 



220 NOVISSIMA. 

into that eternity where all is to be estimated in 
duration and greatness on the being and life of the 
Infinite God. 

The Word Incarnate was not reading a lesson in 
astronomy when He thus summed up the mighty 
cosmic revolution which shall precede His coming 
as Judge and Remunerator : 

"Immediately after the tribulation of those days, 
the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not 
give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, 
and the powers of heaven shall be moved. And 
then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in 
heaven: and then shall all tribes of the earth mourn. 
. . . They shall see the Son of Man coming in 
the clouds of heaven with much power and majesty. 
And He shall send His angels with a trumpet, and 
a great voice: and they shall gather together His 
elect from the four winds, from the furthest part 
of the heavens to the utmost bounds of them." * 

St. Paul, delivering to the Corinthians the re- 
vealed doctrine on this point, thus supplements what 
St. Matthew omits : 

"We shall all indeed rise again, but we shall not 
all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of 
an eye, at the last trumpet : for the trumpet shall 
sound, and the dead shall rise again incorruptible ; " t 
that is, with bodies thenceforth exempted from death 
and the corruption and dissolution which follow 
close upon death in the present stage of human 
existence. 

It is the Almighty Creator who is consummating 
His own work in the physical and moral world. 
We are to take His account of His mysterious oper- 
ation on matter and spirit, as well as the course of 

* St. Matthew, xxiv, 29-31. 1 1 Cor., xv, 51. 



HOVISSIMA 221 

events as they occur at the beginning of that final 
transformation of all things. 

"As the lightning cometh out of the east and 
appeareth even unto the west, so shall also the 
coming of the Son of Man be." * This accords with 
the "moment," the "twinkling of an eye/' meas- 
uring the mighty "change," from the dust and 
immobility of the grave to the fullness and activity 
of bodily life, wrought in the countless myriads of 
the human race by the simple word of the Son of 
God — the glorious King of humanity. 

THE NEW CREATION. 

We who pride ourselves on our reason, make a 
most feeble use of its light in our "reasonings" 
about the divine Power, Its efficacy, and Its wisdom. 
Estimating in thought the past human generations, 
whose mortal remains slumber in the dust of earth 
from which the Almighty Hand originally drew them 
to associate them with the life and destinies of 
immortal spirits, we are appalled by the thought of 
how even Omnipotence could command all this life- 
less clay, this scattered dust, to arise, and live, and 
stand forth under the canopy of heaven, more innu- 
merable, far and wide-extending than the trees of the 
American forests when Vespucci first touched the 
continent — forests covering the land from Cape Horn 
to the ice of the northern polar regions, waving 
green along the shores of mighty river and sea-like 
lake between the tides of the eastern and the western 
oceans ! 

There was an epoch when these same continents 
bore not the germ of tree, or shrub, or grass, nor 
had ever been trodden by the foot of living thing— 

* St. Matthew, xxiv, 27» 



222 novissima. 

when not even an insect troubled the silent air with 
the hum of its wings, and not a germ of life stirred 
within the depths of these desolate waters. And 
then, at His bidding, who is the Fount and the Lord 
of Life, earth, and air, and sea are filled with life, 
and beauty, and the joy of animate existence. 

And we hesitate to believe that the Power, the 
Wisdom, and the Love, from whose creative action 
man sprung into being and covered the earth, could 
recall past generations from the grave! "We who, 
with all the experimental science of the past and the 
present at our command, can study the first forms of 
life in the primitive cell of vegetable or animal 
tissue find in the one and the other an insoluble 
problem; we who can admire the grass of our fields 
and the flowers of our gardens are, with all our 
treasures of knowledge, powerless to create either 
the tiniest blade of grass or the simplest flower! 
And yet we ask : " How can God bring the dead to 
life? How can He recall from the grave the untold 
generations of men?" 

\ THE OBJECTIONS REFUTED BY ST. PAUL. 

The Corinthians, to whom St. Paul addressed ins 
two wonderful Epistles, had heard a like difficulty 
opposed to the revealed doctrine of Christ, for Paul 
answers it thus : 

" But some man will say : ' How do the dead rise 
again? or with what manner of body shall they 
come ? ' 

"Senseless man! that which thou sowest is not 
quickened except it die first. And [in] that which 
thou sowest, thou sowest not the body that shall be, 
but bare grain, as of wheat, or of some of the rest. 



NOVISSIMA. 223 

But God giveth it a body as He will, and to every 
seed its proper body. All flesh is not the same 
flesh : but one is of men, another of beasts, another 
of birds, another of fishes. 

"And there are bodies celestial, and bodies terres- 
tial; but one is the glory of the celestial, and 
another of the terrestial; one is the glory of the 
sun, another the glory of the moon, and another the 
glory of the stars. For star differeth from star in 
glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is 
sown in corruption, it shall rise in in corruption. 
It is sown in dishonor, it shall rise in glory. It is 
sown in weakness, it shall rise in power. It is 
sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual 
body;" * that is, a supernatural body, endowed with 
new powers, which seem to assimilate it to the nature 
of spirits. 

Such is the doctrine of St. Paul, which one might 
aptly call the Gospel of the Resurrection. 

Let us look into each utterance it contains; for 
each is an abyss of truth so deep that no sounding 
line can fathom it. 

"WHAT MANNER OF BODY WILL RISE AGAIN?" 

In the first century of the Christian era, as in the 
nineteenth, a rationalistic philosophy, or the self- 
sufficient science of the day, asks: "With what 
manner of body shall they [the dead] come" to life 
again in the resurrection? 

And here we must bear in mind what modern 
physicists affirm as a fact of observation which 
cannot be gainsaid — that every particle in the human 
frame changes periodically, and more than once, 
during the fifty or seventy years allotted to. our 

* 1 Cor., xv, 3544. 



224 HOVlSSTMA. 

existence here below. It is affirmed positively, 
arrogantly : ""Who can say that the fact has been 
proved, demonstrated beyond the possibility of a 
doubt? No reputed man of science, whose testi- 
mony on this matter could be accepted by the calm 
judgment of those who are most competent to pro- 
nounce on this question." 

THE MOST PROBABLE OPINION. 

Shall we say — as appears to be what reason and 
Christian instinct point out as most probable, if not 
morally certain — that it is the body from which the 
soul parts in death, and which is consigned to the 
grave, that the Greater will re-unite to the soul in 
the resurrection? If we follow the customs of all 
peoples, civilized and uncivilized, so far as they can 
be traced in sacred and in profane history, even from 
prehistoric ages down to our own, we are met by the 
fact that the great majority of nations preserved the 
dead body with reverent care, taking the most scrupu- 
lous precautions to save it from corruption by em- 
balming, or its repose from being violated. Even 
when the body was consumed by fire, the ashes and 
bones were gathered up, sprinkled with fragrant 
essences, bestowed in urns or vessels, and the tombs 
which guarded these deposits so constructed as to 
secure them against violence or profanation. 

W r e know, however, that the instinctive veneration 
of mankind watched everywhere, and in all ages, 
over the repose of the dead. Not till the unnatural 
lust for plunder, and the impious hatred of their 
religious past, begotten by the revolt of the Eighth 
Henry, had changed the hearts and souls of the men 
who served him, had the civilized world been horri- 



NOVISSIMA. 225 

fied by the wholesale profanation of the tomb. 
Avarice, we may believe, had more to do with these 
abominable sacrileges than even religions fanati- 
cism. The Roundheads of the following century 
only imitated the example set by the commissioners 
of Henry. And the French revolutionists, at the 
end of the eighteenth century, had, in the violation 
of the shrine of Edward the Confessor, of St. Thomas 
of Canterbury, and so many others in Great Britain 
and Ireland, a precedent, excusing the horrors com- 
mitted at St. Denis and throughout France. It was 
this same generation which invaded the cemeteries 
of Egypt — cemeteries till then respected by the 
Moslem. The custom obtained the sanction of 
science; and then were ransacked in succession the 
sepulchres of extinct peoples in the East and the 
West, and in both hemispheres. 

This violation of the grave, become a custom 
within the memory of living man, stands forth as a 
thing condemned by the unanimous voice of all past 
peoples and ages, and condemned as well by the 
Catholic Church, the mother of regenerated humanity, 
the divinely-appointed guardian of the dead, as well 
as the guide of the living. In baptism she anoints 
with chrism the bodies of those who are born anew 
in those waters which typify the Blood of Christ, be- 
cause the body of the Christian is the living temple 
of the Holy Ghost. At the approach of death she 
anoints them again, both to cleanse them from every 
stain contracted on the road of life, and to sanctify 
and consecrate them still more in anticipation of the 
hoped-for immortality. Where she is free to do so, 
she loves to have the bodies of her children reposing 
around her temples. Her cemeteries are solemnly 



226 NOVISSTMA. 

consecrated, in order that those who sleep there may 
rest in the peace of Christ, amid the prayers, the love, 
and reverence of the faithful, until the sound of the 
last trump summon them to that final birth, which is 
only the dawn of the true, perfect, and everlasting life. 
The Christian belief and practice, therefore, in all 
that relates to the burial of the dead, and the touch- 
ing reverence for their remains, only resumes in 
their completeness and true significance the hallowed 
customs of the human race both before and after 
Christ. 

THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD AN ACT OF FAITH IN 
THE RESURRECTION. 

The Church of Christ inherited the belief of the 
Synagogue — that the dead were destined to be one 
day recalled to life. Christ cleared up by His reve- 
lation what was obscure and doubtful in the Jewish 
tradition. St. Paul, as we have seen, gave additional 
fullness to the scanty details left us by the Evan- 
gelists of the Master's teaching on this head. 

So, then, both before Christ and after, those who 
believed in revealed truth considered that in con- 
signing to the grave the inanimate bodies of their 
dear ones, they were doing as does the husbandman, 
depositing in the furrow grain which, in germinating, 
would lose its own proper form to assume, as it 
grew up, the perfection of a new life. Hence the 
wonderful appositeness of St. Paul's words in reply- 
ing to the objectors of the first century: "That 
which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die 
first. And [in] that which thou sowest, thou sowest 
not the body which shall be." 

We had no part in the forming of the grain and 
its vital germ ; no part in framing the laws by virtue 



^ovissima. 227 

of which it germinates, puts forth its green leaves, 
grows up into stalk and ear, and ripens into the 
golden sheaves of harvest. We can only help toward 
the unfolding of the mystery of life in the grain of 
corn ; but the mystery shall remain for man's utmost 
science an abyss, to the bottom of which no sound- 
ing line of his can reach on this side of the grave. 

He from whom come the beginnings of human 
life — He whose hand framed that wonderful being, 
man, from the first unconscious, helpless stages of 
Ins existence to perfect manhood — will keep watch 
and ward of every atom consigned to the tomb. As 
He develops the lordly oak from the little acorn 
which we bury in the ground; so from our body of 
clay laid to rest in the grave will He unfold an 
immortal and glorious body in His own appointed 
time, on the resurrection day, at the new and 
divinest birth of mankind — the dawn of the ever- 
lasting spring-tide. 

It is the duty of each living generation of man- 
kind to entomb with loving reverence and awe the 
bodies of those to whom, under God, they owe their 
own existence. If no sacrilegious hand disturbs the 
repose of the grave, the deposit will be sacredly 
kept till the resurrection morn. But even when the 
sacred dust has been dispersed, can a single atom of 
it perish for Him in whom all things have their 
being, or escape the eye of His providence or the 
hands of those angels who are the ministers of His 
love toward mankind? 

St. Paul next hints at the wonderful variety offered 
by the animal world — every species and variety from 
man down to the low r est zoophyte deriving its char- 
acteristics and wonderful beauty from the Infinitely 



228 NOVISSIMA. 

"Wise and the Infinitely Powerful. Even in the 
boundless universe of inorganic matter there reigns 
the same prodigious variety. "And there are bodies 
celestial and bodies terrestial; but one is the glory 

of the celestial, and another of the terrestial 

Star diifereth from star in glory. So also the resur- 
rection of the dead." 

Do not pass over these sentences lightly. To the 
eye of mortal man during this present stage of brief 
life, limited observation, and imperfect knowledge, 
the spectacle of the earth around him and the worlds 
which float in space, is a mighty book, every page 
and character of which tells of that Infinite Power 
and Wisdom. Even this little globe of ours is a 
volume, no one page of whose wonders has yet been 
perfectly conned by any one man, or by all the 
children of men, since the world began. So mag- 
nificent are the works of God in the visible world, 
of which we obtain only imperfect glimpses. 

But of that new creation which is to be ushered 
in by the resurrection, what magnificence, what 
variety, what glorious forms of life can we not 
predicate ? 

HEAVEN COMES DOWN TO OUR EARTH. 

The angelic and the human worlds are brought 
face to face in their entirety. Not one of the mighty 
spirits created at the very birth of time but will be 
present at that assembly convened by the Creator. 
The hosts of the faithful angels, marshaled under 
Michael's leadership, will extend their shining ranks 
around the seat of the divine Majesty. What a 
glorious sight, even for the eye of seraph or Saint to 
contemplate, will be this noblest portion of His 



novissima. 229 

creation — these armies of His ever-loving servants 
and ministers ! 

From heaven have also come down with the King 
and His angels the countless multitudes of blessed 
human spirits, admitted to the Beatific Vision 
through Christ's merits, and now eager to be re- 
united to their bodies, and thus bear the last resem- 
blance to their divine Head, the Son of God and of 
the Virgin Mary. He is, in heaven, true Man, the 
integrity of His human nature enjoying, in its union 
with the Godhead, the highest degree of glory and 
bliss ; and this elder Brother of ours reigning there 
in body and soul, is also very God. No human 
spirit in the vast family collected in heaven with 
Adam and Eve, with Jesus and Mary, but yearns, 
as the day of the new birth is about to dawn, to be 
like the second Adam and the second Eve, united 
with the body- — with a body in every way resembling 
theirs. 

There is another portion of the angelic and the 
human world which has been bidden to the scene as 
a preliminary to the general resurrection — those eter- 
nally excluded from heaven. Among these, such as 
have departed this life unstained by any deadly guilt 
of their own, but not engrafted on Christ by baptism, 
or a living faith in Him as the promised Redeemer 
and Restorer, will, indeed, never enjoy the society 
of the blessed or the Beatific Vision. But they will 
not be condemned to the torments of the wicked. 
Nay; it is not improbable that their final abode 
shall be, not the region of the eternal death, but the 
Limbus, or "fringe," of the Fathers — a world skirt- 
ing this latter, or midway between heaven and hell; 
whose inhabitants, enjoying a real immortality, are 



230 STOVISSMA. 

blessed with a knowledge and love of God, such as 
the soul is fitted for by nature, and blessed too with 
the social charities begotten by intercourse with the 
good; for such we suppose this portion of the 
human family to be. 

But it is to the unhappy tribes of the eternally 
lost that the summons to meet the Judge, and the 
thought of reunion with the body, shall be alike 
dreadful. 

To both fallen angels and fallen men, this meeting 
with the blessed company of heaven, and the Man- 
Gcd King over all, apply the words of Scripture, in 
which the guilty call upon the mountains to fall 
upon them and hide them from the face of the Lamb. 

QUAXTUS TREMOR EST FUTURUS ! 

Brief as the interval between their being thus 
brought together and the resurrection may be, ages 
of thought and feeling will be crowded into it : the 
thought of their God, infinite in His greatness, His 
love, mercy, and justice — a thought most blissful 
to his faithful servants — a thought overwhelmingly 
bitter to His enemies : the feeling in the blessed 
that this hour is only the solemn triumph of their 
•Master's wisdom, justice, and power, so long blas- 
phemed by the wicked — the last splendor added to 
their own glory — the filling up and overflowing of 
their cup of delight — and the feeling of humiliation 
and despair in the lost at the manifest evidence of 
their own unnatural wickedness, at that persevering 
perversity of will which turned them away from 
God in life and in death, and which is to remain for 
all eternity. 

Then as the dread trumpet sounds — the signal 
which God's angels have been waiting for during 



NOVISSIMA. 231 

ages — the Almighty Virtue, which is infinite at 
every point of creation, from the centre all round to 
the circumference of the universe, by the ministry 
of these faithful angels brings together each particle 
of the body from which every human soul has parted 
in death, and makes of it in an instant an organic 
whole. Into their bodies the souls of the just lov- 
ingly, rapturously enter, at once communicating by 
this reunion, in accordance with the divine Will, the 
supernatural qualities which shone forth in Christ's 
own body on that Easter morning when He burst 
the barriers of His sepulchre. 

And the fairest sight that even God's own eyes 
beheld, the myriad myriads of Adam and Eve's 
descendants stand forth on this earth of ours, im- 
mortal, glorious, triumphant, in the consciousness of 
their possessing the perfection, the fullness, of that 
bliss and that life for which humanity w r as created 
and destined from the beginning. 

When the traveler, after passing through the 
snows and ice of winter and the frightful Alpine 
solitudes of the Splugen, comes suddenly with the 
dawn of morning upon some lofty eminence, over- 
looking Upper Italy, arrayed in all the loveliness 
and glory of her spring-tide, he may well pause, en- 
raptured, and fancy that he stands at the gates of the 
earthly Paradise. 

But no spectacle of splendor, magnificence, and 
sublimity afforded by the fairest region of earth, at 
its sunniest season, can afford any point of com- 
parison to the glories of the resurrection morn, when, 
around the Parents of the new life — the Redeemer 
and His Mother, together with the assembled angelic 
hosts — shall stand Adam and Eve, with the count- 



232 NOVISSIMA. 

less millions of their blessed children, just clothed 
with the additional splendors of their immortal and 
spiritualized bodies. The revival of nature yearly, 
after the long winter of our northern latitudes, and 
within the tropics the reflorescence of vegetation in 
forest and plain, when the rainy season has passed 
away, always, from the beginning, pointed to this 
new birth of humanity, this final triumph of life 
over death, this perfect restoration of all things in 
Christ and through Christ. 

Oh! the song of exultation and thanksgiving 
which bursts from the lips of these million millions 
of human beings just restored to the completeness 
of life, immortality, glory, and happiness ! What a 
flower is that which blossoms forth from the grave! 

Let us sing to the Lord, for He is gloriously magnified ; 

The Lord is my strength and my praise, 
And He is become salvation to me ; 
He is my God, and I will glorify Him; 
The God of my father, and I will exalt Him ! 

O hope, which has lived in the dust of untold 
generations, all through the slowly passing centuries 
— hope in the living God, the firm trust in Him who 
should raise us up in the last day — how magnifi- 
cently thou art fulfilled ! Let your eyes run along 
these myriads regenerated in the Blood of the Lamb, 
signed with His name, sealed with His blessing in 
death, and now raised up into a participation of His 
immortality, His eternity, His felicity. O Father 
of the world to come, what a family is Thine, what 
a kingdom, what a triumph! 



KOYISSIMA* 233 



CHAPTER XVI. 



THE GENERAL JUDGMENT. 



THE ENTIRE ANGELIC AND HUMAN WORLDS FACE TO 
FACE WITH THEIR CREATOR AND JUDGE. 

Thou hast given me, Lord, a delight in Thy doings : 

And in the works of Thy hands I shall rejoice 

Lord, how great are Thy works I 

Thy thoughts are exceeding deep. 

The senseless man shall not know, 

Nor will the fool understand these things. 

When the wicked shall spring up as grass, 

And all the workers of iniquity shall appear : 

That they may perish forever. 

But Thou, Lord, art most high for evermore. 

—Psalm XCI, 5-9. 

The resurrection — the new birth of mankind — is 
only the prelude to the general judgment. This 
mighty drama has both its joyous and its terrible 
part. The birth of the elect to the new life of eter- 
nity is the triumph of the divine Love and Mercy. 
The resurrection of the wicked to judgment is only 
the beginning of the eternal death. The judgment, 
which we are now going to assist at, is the vindica- 
tion and triumph of the Infinite Goodness, Wisdom, 
and Justice. 

HOW OUR FATHERS LOVED TO THINK OF THE 
JUDGMENT. 

No. subject within the scope of human thought has 
been more frequently treated by sacred orator, poet, 



234 KovissntA. 

painter, and sculptor, than this last day, with its 
assizes, in which the entire human race have to 
appear and give an account of their lives — of the 
use or misuse of God's magnificent gifts. This was 
a subject with which our forefathers were more 
familiar than we are, with all our boasted civilization, 
our professed worship of the Scriptures, and the 
millions yearly spent to scatter copies of the muti- 
lated versions of them over heathen and Christian 
lands. 

In those magnificent temples, for the erection of 
which a whole people loved to labor in those ages 
when faith and its mighty truths were better known 
by the peasant than by prince and noble, when 
religion regulated the lives of the guilds of work- 
men, who had created every city in Christendom 
almost, the very walls inside and outside were 
graphic, speaking histories of man. and his destinies, 
and his deeds. The last judgment was most fre- 
quently the subject vividly represented by the 
sculptor over the principal door of the church, so 
that no one could enter there and lift up his eyes to 
the magnificent portal, with its world of statuary, 
without beholding, as on the title page of an illus- 
trated book, the Judge seated on His throne, the 
dead arising, the good separated from the wicked, 
heaven open to receive the just, and hell beneath 
swallowing up its doomed inhabitants. Inside the 
sacred edifice the same subject was repeated by the 
painter, within the very sanctuary sometimes, and 
near the altar, that the worshipers might be reminded 
that the God of the Temple, so near them, so lavish 
ot His gifts, so desirous of their salvation, should 
one day judge them with inexorable justice. And 



KOVISSIMA. 235 

to this clay, on many of the glorious stained-glass 
windows which shed on the interior so soft a radi- 
ance, judgment, heaven, and hell look down upon 
the people beneath, reminding them of the goal 
toward which they are traveling. 

It was merciful thus to keep before the eyes of 
every generation of Christians the terrible responsi- 
bility that was hanging over them for the use of time 
and its opportunities, for their own fidelity to con- 
science ancl the light that was in them, for the 
discharge of their duties to God and themselves, 
and to their brethren for the love of God. These 
churches were a book ever open to the people in 
times when a manuscript Bible cost a fortune. 

THE PAET COXSCIEXCE WILL PLAY. 

But for the past generations, as for the present 
and the future, we know that there shall be but one 
Judge on that last day, and that for each man, 
woman or child there shall be one principal accuser 
and witness — conscience. 

It is a sad, a terrible, a mysterious, and yet a 
glorious story — that of free will granted from the 
beginning to angel and to man. If the greatest 
minds that have ever shed the light of their genius 
and their virtues along the path over which mankind 
has been traveling, have only seen in our innate 
freedom to choose between good and evil the root of 
all man's moral grandeur; if they have endeavored 
to show, both by their own reasoning and by the 
shining examples of their lives, that God's law is 
easy of execution, and that He has provided a thou- 
sand helps to encourage the willing, a thousand 
motives to dissuade the weak and the wicked from 



236 stovissimA. 

wrong-doing; others, on the contrary, have either 
denied that essential freedom altogether, or have made 
the divine law a thing impossible of observance, or 
of salvation a work in which God does everything — 
man's co-operation nothing. 

To those who read these pages, and who believe 
as the writer does, there can be no question of God's 
having done everything for man that God could do. 

god's effoets to save us. 

He set before Him from the beginning the sublime 
destiny and the unspeakable felicity which we have 
endeavored to describe and explain in the preceding 
chapters. Towards the attainment of heaven and its 
happiness, we have the royal road of God's Com- 
mandments, of Christ's precepts and examples, the 
ever-present sources of grace in the Sacraments by 
Himself instituted, the unfailing light which His 
Spirit pours on oar mind to make us see what is 
good, or better, or best, and the unfailing impulse 
and strength given at the very same time to our 
heart to be true to the light within us. And to 
those who are earnest in following that royal road to 
heaven, how many other helps are afforded in the 
words and conduct of God's true servants around 
them ! 

And if the knowledge of this glorious destiny, if 
the attraction of this eternal existence, with all its 
glory and felicity, should be insufficient to stimulate 
the generosity of men's souls and to awaken all that 
is noble in them, God has set before men's eyes the 
certainty of eternal punishment for those who refuse 
to serve Him, and to secure thereby their own ever- 
lasting happiness. 



KOVISSIMA. 23? 

We who believe in Christ Crucified, in the love of 
the Father who gave His Son to such a death for our 
sakes, can never forget that such a death must have 
been endured to save fallen man from infinite misery, 
as well as to gain for him happiness without end. 

CHEIST CRUCIFIED PLACED ACROSS THE GATE OF 
HELL, 

You who read this believe with me that Christ 
wished by His cross to close forever to mankind the 
gates of an everlasting hell, and to open the gates of 
an everlasting heaven. When you take up your 
crucifix, and look upon Him who is nailed to it, the 
thought must come to you that He paid a dear price 
for your eternal salvation. Can we think, believing 
what we do, and knowing all that we do about 
Christ's infinite generosity, that the man who, with 
his eyes open to the consequences of his conduct, 
lives so as to outrage Christ, to turn his back upon 
heaven, and to make hell the certain reward of his 
deeds, has any right to count on God's mercy ? Has 
he any lawful claim to the pity of all who love 
generosity and detest ingratitude? 

Take up the bbok of the crucifix, and read the 
lesson of love, infinite and incomprehensible, which 
these nailed hands and feet and that thorn-crowned 
head must teach the dullest and the most hardened; 
and say if hell, with its eternal separation from God, 
its irreparable loss of heaven and its beatitude, and 
all the consuming fire of remorse at the remembrance 
of His Blood shed in vain, and His unavailing agony 
of shame and bodily torture, are too deep a punish- 
ment for the impenitent and unloving sinner? 



238 NOVISSIMA. 

This infinite love, mercy, and generosity — the 
light on the soul coming from the lesson of the 
cross and the Crucified Saviour — shall be that in 
which the myriads of lost Christians will read their 
own guilt on the last day, and acquiesce in the sen- 
tence which banishes them forever from the society 
of God and His faithful servants. 

THE CROSS ILLUMINES THE SCENE OF JUDGMENT. 

Recalling, therefore, what is in itself indescribable, 
because everything in the scene of the resurrection 
and the general judgment partakes of the infinite, 
the immense, we must endeavor to force our imagi- 
nation to picture the two worlds — literally the two 
worlds which face each other in presence of the 
Judge- — the angelic and the human. Their numbers 
He alone at present knows who is their Creator. 
Every intelligent being called into existence through- 
out the uncounted cycles of time shall stand in that 
presence. 

Let the Gocl-Man Himself now tell us in His own 
words how this judgment is to proceed : 

The Preliminaries. — "And then shall appear the 
sign of the Son of Man in heaven: and then shall 
all tribes of the earth mourn : and they shall see the 
Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with 
much power and majesty. And He shall send His 
angels with a trumpet and a great voice: and they 
shall gather His elect from the four winds, from the 
farthest part of the heavens to the utmost bounds 
of them." * 

The Judgment Itself. — "And when the Son of Man 
shall come in His majesty, and all the angels with 
Him, then shall He sit upon the seat of His majesty. 

* St. Matthew, xxiv, 30-31. 



HOVISSIMA. 239 

And all nations shall be gathered together before 
Him ; and He shall separate them one from another, 
as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats. 
And He shall set the^ sheep on His right hand, but 
the goats on His left. 

" Then shall the King say to them that shall be 
on His right hand : ' Come ye blessed of My Father, 
possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the 
foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you 
gave Me to eat : I was thirsty, and you gave Me to 
drink: I was a stranger, and you took me in: 
naked, and you covered Me: sick, and you visited 
Me : I was in prison, and you came to Me/ 

"Then shall the just answer Him, saying: 'Lord, 
when did we see Thee hungry, and fed Thee: 
thirsty, and gave Thee drink? And when did we 
see Thee a stranger, and took Thee in : or naked, 
and covered Thee? Or when did we see Thee sick 
or in prison, and came to Thee?' 

"And the King, answering, shall say to them: 
'Amen, I say to you, as long as you did it to one of 
these My least brethren, you did it to Me/ 

"Then He shall say to them also that shall be on 
His left hand: 'Depart from Me, you cursed, into 
everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and 
his angels. 

"Tor I was hungry, and you gave Me not to eat: 
I was thirsty, and you gave Me not to drink : I was 
a stranger, and you took Me not in : naked, and you 
covered Me not: sick and in prison, and you did not 
visit Me.' 

"Then they also shall answer Him, saying: 
'Lord, when did we see Thee hungry or thirsty, or 
a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did 
not minister to Thee?' 



240 KOVISSIMA. 

"Then He shall answer them, saving: 'Amen. 
I say to you, as long as you did it not to one of these 
least, neither did you do it to Me.' 

"And these shall go into everlasting punishment : 
but the just into life everlasting." * 

Such, on this great drama of divine justice, is the 
simple but all-pregnant description of the Eternal 
Word made Man. 

CHAELTY IS THE FULFILLMENT OF THE LAW. 

One law was imposed on mankind from the be- 
ginning — that commanding man to love God with all 
his soul and all his strength, and all mankind, his 
brethren, as himself. This is what the divine Law- 
giver expressly affirms elsewhere in the Gospel. 
"Which is the great commandment in the law?" 
asks one of the Jewish doctors. Christ answers 
forthwith: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and 
with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the 
first commandment. And the second is like to this : 
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these 
two commandments dependeth the whole law and the 
prophets." t 

AVe know how Christ, the very last day of His 
life, added to this twofold law His own complement : 
"This is my commandment, that you love one 
another as I have loved you. Greater love than 
this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for 
his friends." X 

"We are glancing back along the road over which 
the human race has traveled since its cradle in 
Eden — glancing back at it, as we listen to the award 

* St. Matthew, xxv, 31-46. t St. John, xv, 12-13. 

t Ibidem, xsii, 36-40. 



NOVISSIMA. 241 

meted out by the just Judge to both the good and 
the wicked of the entire race. It is striking to find, 
in the history of God's people, how often this law of 
charity, which, if observed, would make a heaven of 
earth, and effectually close the gates of hell, was 
reiterated, and its practice enjoined, now in one 
respect, and now in another. 

God had in a particular manner insisted on paying 
back to Himself in the person of the stranger, the 
poor, the suffering, the debt of love and gratitude 
due to Him. Christ expressly identifies Himself 
with all who stand in need of the kindly offices of 
this brotherly love. 

"He," [the Lord,] says Moses, "doth execute the 
judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth 
the stranger, in giving him food and raiment. Love 
ye, therefore, the stranger; for ye were strangers 
in the land of Egypt." * And elsewhere : " The 
stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as 
one born among you, and thou shalt love him as 
thyself." f A few centuries before the coming of 
Christ another inspired writer says: "Offer to the 
Lord .... the sacrifice of sanctification and 
the first fruits of the holy things. And stretch out 
thy hand to the poor, that thy expiation and thy 
blessing may be perfect. A gift hath grace in the 
sight of all the living, and restrain not grace from 
the dead. Be not wanting in comforting them that 
weep, and walk with them that mourn. Be not slow 
to visit the sick : for by these things thou shalt be 
confirmed in love. In all thy works remember thy 
last end, and thou shalt never sin." J 

* Deut., x, 18-19. J Ecclesiasticus, vii, 35-40. 

t Leviticus, xix. 34. 



242 stovissima. 

Is tliis not foreshadowing the grounds on which 
we shall all be judged on the last day? It is not 
that men in every age shall not have other duties to 
fulfill, and that there are not other sins for which our 
souls shall have to answer besides those against 
charity and the obligations of bodily and spiritual 
mercy; but our Lord evidently supposes that a 
man who loves God with his whole heart will also 
love his brother-man, and fulfill both to the one and 
the other every sacred duty. He also points out 
that one w 7 ho loves neither God nor his brethren 
will not only neglect all the duties he owes to both, 
but open his soul to every evil influence and defile it 
with every crime. 

TO LOVE CHEIST IN OUR BRETHREN. 

This is the age to proclaim it on the housetops. 
The fruits of true civilization and the divinest vir- 
tues of religion are tested by ministering to the sad 
needs of body and spirit in the suffering millions 
around us. Never, since the world existed, was it 
more imperative to dispense to sick souls, to Godless 
lives, and to bodily needs ever growing wider and 
deeper, the ministrations of the divinest Christian 
charity, of mercy, infinite and indefatigable. 

If we study Christ, and take Him into our hearts, 
our minds, our strength in every word and deed of 
ours, we shall be to all around us the embodiment 
of His gentleness, His kindness, His untiring and 
far-reaching love. We must school and accustom 
ourselves to see Him in all who need the edification 
of a Godly life to lift them out of sin and world- 
liness; Him in all whose souls are darkened by 
doubt and unbelief; Him in the hearts embittered 



KOVISSIMA. 243 

and angered by the inequality, the iniquity, the piti- 
less greed they have met in those above and around 
them ; Him in every form of poverty, infirmity, and 
suffering. We shall find every day, and every hour, 
and at every step, the needy in spirit, in heart, in 
soul, and in body, the cry of whose sore distress will 
be the cry of Christ Himself appealing to us. 

Do not tarn away. You are offered a golden 
opportunity. 

HOW FRANCIS OF ASSISI EMBRACED CHRIST IN THE 
LEPER. 

St. Francis of Assisi was a wealthy, gay, and 
youthful cavalier, when riding forth one morning, 
he was suddenly startled, amid the green fields and 
the flowering shrubs of the w r ayside hedges, by a 
stench so horrible that he looked around for the 
cause of it. Lo! crouching in a hole, at a short 
distance, was a leper, so hideous, so deformed, that 
the very beast Francis bestrode refused to advance, 
rearing and plunging furiously. The young soldier 
— such he then was — had perceived the appealing 
look cast at him by the forlorn wretch. He had 
wheeled his horse round froni the spot, where the 
leper contaminated earth and air. But these beseech- 
ing eyes followed him ; and he remembered Christ 
who was made a leper for our sakes. So, dismount- 
ing, he went back, cast himself on his knees, and 
tenderly embraced the sufferer. But that instant 
the frightful odor disappeared, and his own soul was 
•flooded by a sense of overpowering sweetness. 
Having bestowed a large alms on the leper, and said 
comforting words to cheer him, lie remounted his 
horse. Turning round to wave adieu to the object 



244 novissima. 

of his compassionate kindness, he was surprised to 
see that the leper had disappeared. He sought for 
him, but it was a vain search. It was our Lord 
Himself who had thus tried the generosity of a soul 
destined to do great things for God and man, and 
which, from that moment, became aflame with the 
love of Christ Crucified. 

Let us learn to find Him on our daily road. How 
sweet it will be to find Him on the last day, and to 
hear: "As long as you did it to one of these My 
least brethren, you did it to Me." 

While the King, with His imperial escort of the 
twofold heavenly world, ascends on high, and the 
other world of the doomed are sinking into ever- 
lasting punishment, we can throw further light on 
the great facts we have been contemplating, and help 
to strengthen our own faith in Revealed Truth, by 
comparing the description of the general judgment, 
as we have taken it from St. Matthew, with a frag- 
ment from one of the most ancient literatures of 
the East. 

LIGHT FROM THE PAGAN EAST. 

It dates from a period when Persia was peopled 
by a race entirely devoted to agricultural and pas- 
toral pursuits. The existing world is described as 
"the world of herds and happy homes. " As the 
writer has been lately studying the condition of his 
own native land in pre-Christian times, the condi- 
tions and manners of the race which had come from 
Central Asia to colonize it, as they are painted by 
the most authentic records, would make of the 
Ireland of 1000 before Christ "a land of herds and 
happy homes." The extract brings us back to an 



KOVISSIMA. 245 

epoch resembling that when Abraham and Lot pas- 
tured their flocks amid the fertile valleys of Palestine. 
Singularly consonant with what the Gospel then 
teaches concerning the equity of the divine judg- 
ments, and the eternal nature of both the final pun- 
ishments and the final rewards, are the religious 
traditions of the ancient Asiastic nations, among 
whom the dogmas of the primitive revelation have 
survived the revolutions and ruin of centuries, and 
the overlapping of so many successive creeds. 



In the fragment of the Avesta, alluded to and 
recently published, the expectancy of the just soul 
after death, the judgment which follows, and the 
description of heaven and its bliss, are given with a 
surprising simplicity and beauty. The fragment 
purports to be a dialogue between Zarathustra (the 
Zoroaster of Eollin), the great religious teacher of 
the ancient Persians, and Ahura-Mazda (Ormusd), 
the Creator of the world. Zarathustra questions : 

" Say, when a just man dies, where dwells his soul 
In that first night that follows after death ? " 

" It takes its place beside the dead man's head, 
Singing the gladsome Ustavaiti hymn, — 
Blessing and happiness to each and all 
Of those Ahura-Mazda wills to bless. . . . 
And through the night that soul is filled with joy — 
Joy great as all the joy of all that live." 

Thus, waiting, singing, and filled with ecstatic joy, 
the second and the third nights pass. 

" But as the third night whitens to the dawn, 
It seems unto the just man's soul as though 
He stood mid plants and flowers ; and from the flowers 
There comes a perfume borne upon a wind, 
A sweet wind, from the region of the south, 
Fragrant, more fragrant than the winds of earth," 



246 KOYISSIMA. 

Here comes upon the soul the wonderful imper- 
sonation of the just man's conscience, or better self, 
which is, even in the Christian interpretation of the 
general judgment, the light and the voice of the 
Supreme Truth and Justice. 

"Then there conies 
Advancing towards him with the fragrant wind 
A maiden, youthful, radiant, beautiful, 
Shapely her arms, her port and tread majestic, 
Tall and erect, of perfect form, as one 
Sprung from some glorious race, in early youth 
Fairer than all that is most fair on earth. 

THE JUDGMENT. 

" Then does the just one ask her : 'Who art thou, 
Fairer than all the maidens I have seen ? ' 

"And she replies: 'I am thy own good thoughts, 
And words, and deeds — thy conscience and thy self.' 

"And who has made thee thus, so beautiful, 
Fragrant, and tall, with this triumphant air, 
Like one that conquers, as I see thee now ? ' ' 

"GOOD thoughts, good woeds, and goodly 

DEEDS." , J 

" 'Tis thou hast made me thus, 'tis thou thyself 
With thy good thoughts, good words, and goodly deeds, 
Drawing thy nature forth in excellence, 
Beauty, and fragrance, and triumphant might, 
That gave thee victory o'er thy enemies. 
When thou didst see, on earth, an evil man 
Dealing in magic, following after lust, 
Or shutting up his heart against the poor, 
Or felling fruitful trees, then thou wouldst kneel 
And sing the holy hymns aloud, and praise 
The pure bright waters and the sacred fire, 
Ahura-Mazda's son, and grant an alms 
To faithful men who came from far and near. 
So thou hast made me, lovely as I was, 
Still lovelier ; beauteous as I ever was, 
More beautiful. A lofty place was mine, 
Thou hast advanced me to a loftier one 
By thy good thoughts, good words, and holy deeds.'* 



HOVissima. 247 

This, in truth, is remarkably in accord with what 
Catholic theologians teach of the general judgment, 
where the book, open to the eyes of men and angels, 
in which each individual can read the record of his 
own good or evil deeds, is conscience — is man placed 
face to face with his own good or evil self. From 
conscience, from this terrible and truth-telling self, 
comes the sentence which forestalls that of the divine 
Judge, and confirms the estimate formed of each 
virtuous or each wicked life by the assembled hosts 
of angels and men. 

And most beautiful is that Persian delineation of 
the good man's self ever growing from good to 
better, from better to better still, advanced by the 
holy use of God's grace from one lofty place in merit 
and sanctity to a still loftier. 

Such is the award of a good conscience. Now 
listen to this brief and pregnant description of the 
just spirit's entrance into eternal felicity: 

AFTER THE JUDGMENT HEAVEN. 

"And then the soul uprises. With one step 
It gains the region by the gate of heaven 
Sacred to holy thoughts ; with one step more 
It gains the region of all holy words; 
One more, the region of all holy deeds. 
Then with another step it enters in 
To the fair realm of uncreated light. 

"Then one who died before him speaks to him— 
One of the just : 'Art dead ? How didst thou come 
Out of the world of herds and happy homes, 
Out of the world of sense to that of soul, 
Out of the world that passes, into this 
That passes not away ? How came to thee 
This lasting happiness ? ' " 

It is simply put. Holy aims and thoughts, holy 
deeds, as well as words, must lead us to the ever- 



248 NOTissraA. 

lasting gates and beyond to "that fair realm of 
uncreated light," the world that passes not away. 

With no less simplicity, truth, and graphic power 
the story of the wicked soul is told, in its downward 
progress far away from light and bliss : 

THE WICKED MAX'S SOUL MEETS HIS CONSCIENCE. 

"Say, when the wicked dies, where dwells his soul 
In that first night that follows after death ? ' ' 

"It hovers restless round the dead man's head, 
Wailing and crying, ' Whither shall I go, 
Or what shall be my refuge ? ' All the night 
That soul is filled with woe and bitterness — 
Woe great as all the woe of all that live. 

" But as the third night whitens to the dawn, 
It seems unto that evil soul as though 
He stood in some strange region, drear and dark, 
And evil odors come upon the wind — 
A cold wind blowing from the bitter north, 
Foul-scented, foulest of the winds that blow; 
He breathes its foulness, and he asks himself, 
'Whence comes this hateful wind, the foulest wind 
That I have ever breathed ? ' " 

Of course, the reader feels that the "hateful wind" 
heralds the approach of the man's conscience, of that 
abominable self, with whom he is presently to be con- 
fronted in judgment. It is a tremendous passage: 

THE WICKED SOUL JUDGED BY HER CONSCIENCE. 

' ' Then there comes 
Advancing towards him with this evil wind 
A woman, old, decayed, with gaping mouth, 
Lean, wasted limbs, plague-spotted skin, bent down 
And bowed with age, foul-scented, horrible. 
Then asks the evil soul : ' Say, who art thou ? 
Than whom I ne'er saw aught more horrible, 
'JVIongst all that God or demon made on earth ? ' 



NOVISSIMA. 249 

"And she replies : 'lam thy own bad thoughts, 
And words, and deeds — thy conscience and thy self. 
'Tis thou thyself hast made me what I am. 
When thou didst see good men, with prayer and praise, 
Offer the sacrifice, and keep with care 
From all that soils the water and the fire, 
And guard the cattle and the fruitful trees, 
And all good things that wise Ahura made, 
Then thou wouldst do the wicked demon's will, 
Still serving Angro-Mainyus. * When the good 
Gave alms to faithful men from far and near, 
Then thou wouldst close thy heart against the poor. 
So hast thou made me, evil as I was, 
More evil ; hateful as I was, more hateful ; 
Driving me northward to the demon's land 
By those bad thoughts, and words, and deeds of thine.' 

AFTEE THIS JUDGMENT EVEELASTING HELL. 

"And then the soul uprises. With one step 
It sinks into the hell of evil thoughts ; 
One more, into the hell of evil words ; 
A third, into the hell of evil deeds ; 
A fourth, and lo ! the everlasting night. 

"Then one who died before him speaks to him — 
One of the damned : ' Art dead ? How didst thou come 
Out of the world of herds and happy homes, 
Out of the world of sense to that of soul, 
Out of the world that passes, into this 
That passes not away ? How came to thee 
This day of lasting evil ? ' 

" Then the fiend, 
Dark Angro-Mainyus, cries : ' Nay, question not 
This soul, new come from out the weary way, 
The last dread journey when the soul and flesh 
Are parted. Let them bring him fitting food, 
Poison and mixed with poison, as beseems 
The man of evil thoughts, and words, and deeds, 
Whose life on earth was ever bent to ill. ' ' ' 

—From The Month, October, 1885. 

* Angro-Mainyus Is the author of all evil— the enemy of God and all 
good. 



250 hoyissima. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



CHRIST S HUJIAX EMPIRE AFTER THE RESUR- 
RECTION. 



WHAT MAX CAX BE. 

"That was not first which is spiritual, but that which is 
natural : afterwards that wliich is spiritual. 

"The first man was of the earth,, earthly: the second man, 
from heaven, heavenly. 

"Such as : ; the earthly, such also are the earthly: and such 
as is the he m J.y, such also are they that are heavenly. 

••Therefore, as we have borne the image of the earthly, let us 
jar the image of the heavenly.'' 

— 1 Corinthia .. x v, -0-49. 

There are among those who claim to profess a 
superior or exclusive reverence for the words of 
Scripture not a few unwilling to admit any interpre- 
tation of its sense at variance with their own private 
judgment, or with the rationalistic nc >y which 

they are guided even when they think they are fol- 
lowing the light of revelation. 

refuse U pi the :rine here plainly 

taught, that the bodies of Christ's elect, after the 
resurrection, will be endowed with the supernatural 
qualities possessed by H i fter He had issued 

from the tomb. 

The d : ral tendency of all who. 

the present century, followed the light of private 



KOVISSIMA. 251 

judgment, in opposition to the authoritative teaching 
of the Church and her careful interpretation of Holy 
Writ) to reject from revealed religion and Chris- 
tianity itself everything that can be rightly defined 
as supernatural, has become almost universal among 
them since German rationalism, French scepticism, 
and the scientific materialism of the English schools 
have come to tyrannize over the intellectual world. 
Catholics, with their unchanging and unerring 
guide, the spouse of Christ, cherish the ancient 
belief of the Patriarchs, inherited by the Hebrew 
Church, completed and reaffirmed by Christ, and 
here so eloquently, so clearly expounded by St. Paul. 

SUMMABY OF CATHOLIC DOCTEINE ABOUT THE 
BIS EN BODY. 

As man in his first or earthly stage has a body 
subject to the laws and necessities of his present 
condition; a body gross, growing from the first 
germs of organized life to its full maturity, and then 
decaying till the separation from the soul gives it up 
to corruption, the worm, and its original dust; a 
body needing meat and drink, repose and sleep, and 
a thousand precautions against disease and hurtful 
accidents ; so in the second or heavenly stage of his 
existence, where both soul and body attain to their 
supernatural destiny and the divine life of the 
Beatific Vision, the change effected in man's soul 
and in all its faculties requires a corresponding 
change in the body united with it in this heavenly 
existence and the truly divine life it bestows. 

" The first man Adam was made into a living soul; 
the last Adam [Christ] into a quickening Spirit," 



252 XOYISSIMA. 

Like the inferior animals, who derive their very 
name from the soul or immaterial principle which 
gives them life, his body was subject to the laws of 
organic growth and decay, of sensual appetite, and 
the struggle for existence. This is what St. Paul 
calls the "natural body" — a body doomed to death 
and subject to the cravings of sensual appetite and 
necessity ; and the " living soul " is thus the slave 
of animal needs. 

In the second creation — or heavenly and eternal 
phase of human existence — we are born, in soul and 
in body, after the image of the last or divine Adam, 
Christ Jesus. Our body, in that divine life to which 
we are raised in Him and through His merits, is to 
be a supernatural or "spiritual" body, fitted and 
adapted in every way to the uses of that exalted 
existence, in which the carnal love of the present 
life has no place, and the present necessities are 
superseded by the fruition of a blissful immortality, 
and a divinely spiritual life. It may truly be said 
of Christ, the meritorious Cause of that life, that 
both in body and soul He is " a quickening Spirit" 

The natural body which each earthly generation 
deposits in the grave, as the husbandman casts his 
seed into the furrow, will, at God's own appointed 
time, rise from the earth "a spiritual body," created 
anew on the model of His, who, on the resurrection 
day, comes down as the "quickening Spirit" from 
heaven, and so rises from the dust "heavenly." 
" Such as is the heavenly, such also are they that are 
heavenly." 

And then we have, for the instruction and conso- 
lation of all who believe in Christ, and hope firmly 
in the fulfillment of His promises on the last day, 



hovissoia. 253 

the solemn affirmation of the great Apostle, so near 
his end: 

"Therefore, as we have borne the image of the 
earthly [Adam], let us bear also the image of the 
heavenly" [Christ.] But, as we shall see, each blessed 
soul on that day will be come to its body "a quick- 
ening spirit." 

Christ's transfiguration and ours. 

Now, what is the image of that "last Adam," 
and His "heavenly" body, which is to be the 
model on which the Creator, at the beginning of the 
new and everlasting era of human existence, is to 
mould and perfect the bodies of Christ's elect? 
Only St. Matthew and St. Mark describe His trans- 
figuration. Yet the body which shone on the Mount 
with such surpassing brightness was only His 
mortal body. It had not then passed through the 
fiery furnace of His Passion, and thereby merited 
for itself and for the bodies of His faithful followers 
the glories of the resurrection. 

St. Matthew says: "His face did shine as the 
sun, and His garments became white as snow." 
St. Mark adds: "His garments became shining 
and exceeding white as snow, so as no fuller upon 
earth can make white." 

Of His body only the face was seen, as dazzling as 
the noonday sun. This was the glory due to the 
hyposlatic union, the union, namely, of our humanity 
with the Person of the Son, and to the Beatific Vision 
consequent upon that union. It was only by a 
miracle — a miracle necessary to the fulfillment of 
His missionary career — that this natural effulgence 
was concealed. But, besides the splendor thus due 



254 NOVISSIMA. 

to the body of the Incarnate Son, the sufferings of 
His Passion merited additional glory. This He does 
not appear to have shown to His Disciples after His 
Resurrection. 

We can only repeat here the words of St. John, 
that when He, the Redeemer and the Judge, will 
"appear," or come solemnly at the end of time to 
complete His work upon earth, "we shall be like to 
Him," the body of each one of us "made like the 
body of His glory," as St. Paul declares to the 
Philippians. 

HAPPINESS COMPLETED BY THIS TRANSFIGURATION. 

The happiness of the soul will then be complete; 
for the human soul has the varied powers of sensi- 
bility, which imply its union with the body and the 
exercise of the organs of sense. These — these in 
particular that minister to the intellect and the 
imagination — will have additional perfection and 
enjoy their own share of blessedness in the new life. 

It is a righteous compensation. For during the 
battle of life, and the long career of self-denial and 
self-crucifixion undergone by the Saints on earth, the 
bodily senses bore their part, and were the willing 
instruments of the generous spirit. In that life of 
ecstatic knowledge, bliss, and joy, of imcompre- 
hensible social beatitude, what will not be the special 
satisfaction of sight and hearing, and even of taste 
and smell ! For, as the body in general is so spirit- 
ualized as to be associated with the soul in the 
Beatific Vision, and in the enjoyment of all the 
secondary causes of bliss we have above enumerated; 
so will each exterior sense have become more and 
more identified with the interior. The eyes will be 



KOVISSIMA. 255 

the supernaturalized instruments of the intellect in 
the clear sight of the divine Essence, and the contem- 
plation of the divine perfections. And what rap- 
turous sights will await them in the divine humanity 
of our Lord ; in the sweet majesty of His Mother, in 
the glorious bands of saintly personages of every 
age, and country, and sex; of the entire family of 
the elect, in their various degrees of merit and glory, 
in their varied differences of nationality and char- 
acter. Our fancy will not mislead us if we permit 
it to revel in representations of all that is most 
wonderful and most magnificent in the numbers, the 
appearance, the beauty, and the loveliness of these 
blessed multitudes, and the realms which they 
inhabit. 

While our minds are yet full of the glorious 
spectacle of the new birth of mankind, and while 
Christ is ascending, to take anew a more solemn 
and final possession of His empire, escorted by the 
triumphant hosts of angels and men, let us examine 
more carefully the " change " which has taken place 
in the bodies of the just. 

SUPERNATURAL QUALITIES OF GLORIFIED BODIES. 

The first supernatural quality, or divine gift, be- 
stowed on the glorified bodies both of Christ and of 
all His human subjects in heaven is "immortality," 
and with it the "impassibility," or exemption from 
disease, or pain, or any elemental force, or created 
living agency, that can hurt, or bruise, or wound. 
This is what St. Paul means when he says : " The 
dead shall rise again incorruptible : and we shall be 
changed. For this corruptible must put on incor- 
ruption: and this mortal must put on immortality." * 

*1 Cor., XV, 52-54. 



256 KOYISSI^IA. 

The change, therefore, is from the condition of this 
present life, in which we bear in our bodies from the 
cradle to the grave the germs of corruption, decay, and 
death, to that heavenly condition, where nothing can 
weaken, hurt, corrupt, or age any part of our bodily 
organism; it is from mortality to immortality — 
from the perpetual fear and peril of death to that 
everlasting life, secure from all danger, disease, or 
destroying agency. 

Such is not the "incorruption" or " immortality" 
with which are endowed the bodies of those who are 
doomed to share with the fallen angels the pun- 
ishment due to mortal sin deliberately committed 
against the voice of conscience and the light of reason 
and revelation — sin separating the sinner from God, 
the Supreme Good and the Supreme Justice — sin 
unrepented of in life and death. 

The bodies reunited at the resurrection to these 
guilty and lost souls are, indeed, immortal in this 
sense: that death never will separate them. But 
their condition is not one of impassibility, or ex- 
emption from pain. Far from it. Just as their 
will never has returned with all its force, and with 
the sorrow due to the magnitude of their offences, 
to the Author of their being, the Source of life, and 
light, and all good; so the material world and its 
elemental forces are not withheld by a special inter- 
position of Providence from avenging His cause on 
these rebellious transgressors. 

The second gift, likening the bodies of the elect 
to that of Christ their King, is ligktsommess — that 
is, an inherent brightness, of which nothing here 
below can give us an adequate notion. This is what 
is meant by St. Paul when he says of the human 



3T0VISSIMA. 257 

body: "It is sown in dishonor, it shall rise in 
glory." * That men now die at all, is due to the 
fall of Adam, who dragged us all down with him in 
his dishonor. And there is a dishonor in the ruin 
which death and sin thus bring on the fair organic 
structure which the Creator from the beginning 
destined to be the living and beautiful temple of 
His Holy Spirit. 

The glorious effulgence with which the Creator 
invests the human body at the resurrection, is 
alluded to by our Lord Himself where He says : 
"Then shall the just shine like the sun in the king- 
dom of their Father." f St. Paul, writing from his 
prison in Rome to the Philippians, exhorts them, as 
an encouragement to endure all the ills of this life, 
to think of what is promised them in heaven. 
"Our conversation," [that is, our manner of living,] 
he says, "is in heaven, from whence we look for the 
Saviour, who will reform the body of our lowness, 
made like the body of His glory." J 

The promise is too clearly, too explicitly expressed 
to leave any room for question or doubt. 

The next or third gift of glorified bodies is termed 
"agility," and implies both the power to traverse, 
like purely spiritual beings, vast spaces with the 
speed of the lightning, and the power to move great 
material masses. To this quality applies the text: 
"It is sown in weakness, it shall rise in power." || 
In this sense, as speaking of the supernatural agility 
and might bestowed on the bodies of the just, is 
understood the passage of Isaias : "Youths shall 
faint and labor, and young men shall fall by in- 
firmity. But they that hope in the Lord shall renew 

*1 Cor., xv, 43. $ Philip., iii, 20-21. 

t St. Matthew, xiii, 43. || 1 Cor., xv, 43. 



258 KOVISSIMA. 

their strength; they shall run and not be weary; 
they shall walk and not faint." * These words of 
the Prophet may, however, be understood of the 
strength, vigor, and unwearied energy which God 
often bestows on earth on His living servants, who 
spend themselves in holy ministrations. Neverthe- 
less, this great degree of energy vouchsafed by the 
Creator to mortal bodies may, with exceeding pro- 
priety, be conferred on the immortal, and in a state 
of existence where they are indispensable to the soul. 
The text of Isaias from verse twenty-five down to 
the passage we have quoted exalts the attribute of 
God's infinite power, and may be very appropriately 
quoted in referring to the resurrection and its effects : 
"It is He that giveth strength to the weary: and in- 
creaseth force and might to them that are not." f 
Here, again, we see the action of the " quickening 
Spirit." 

St. Jerome does not hesitate to quote the text of 
Isaias as describing accurately the transformation, 
from our present heaviness and infirmity to the 
agility and energy of angels, of the bodily forces of 
the just. 

St. Augustine thus expresses his sentiment: "If 
the angels can, without effort, carry off the bodies 
of living beings and put them where they please, 
why should we not believe that the souls of the 
just can move their own bodies and place them where 
they wish?" t ^ n another passage the great doctor 
says more positively: "It is certain that where- 
soever the spirit wills the body to be, there it will 
be forthwith." || 

* isaias, xl, 30-31. t August., " De Civitate Dei," L. XIII, 18, 

t Ibidem, xl, 29. II Ibidem, L. XXII, cap. ult. 



NOVISSTMA. 259 

The energies of the glorified bodies of the just 
will, undoubtedly, in this resemble those possessed 
by the body of our Lord. 

THE SPIRITUAL AND HEAVENLY BODY. 

The fourth and last attribute or gift of the risen 
bodies of the just is termed "subtility" by theolo- 
gians. It is designated in the text of St. Paul, con- 
trasting the gross, opaque, impenetrable, and heavy 
body laid in the grave, with the "spiritual" body, 
called forth from it by the command of the Creator. 

This quality is that which raises the human organ- 
ism to the closest resemblance with spiritual beings. 
For to a purely spiritual being no material substance 
is impenetrable. 

HELPS TOWARDS UNDERSTANDING THIS POINT. 

This is not the place to discuss the discordant 
theories of physicists regarding "impenetrability." 
Experience teaches us that one hard substance may 
be divided rather than penetrated by a still harder. 
This apparent penetrability comes of want of perfect 
cohesion in the particles of the less hard body. 
Where there is this perfect cohesion, or intimate 
union, of atom with atom forming a molecule, and of 
molecule with molecule composing a mass of sensible 
dimensions, there ought to be perfect physical im- 
penetrability. 

We know, on the other hand, that heat and elec- 
tricity will not only penetrate the hardest known 
substances, such as the diamond, but disintegrate 
and decompose them. Not merely that; but clec- 



260 HOVISSIMA. 

tricity will Separate the molecules of the diamond 
itself, and those indeed of all known substances. 

The experiments of the chemist, as well as those 
of the physicist, go to establish the fact that no body 
with which we are acquainted is able to resist the 
disintegrating and decomposing energy of these 
subtile fluids called electricity, magnetism, etc. Now, 
the theory is that a universally diffused substance 
called ether, filling all space and interposed in the 
hardest and simplest substances (such as the pure 
diamond), between the molecules themselves, if not 
between the atoms proper, is the medium by which 
light, heat, electricity, magnetism, and motion itself, 
are communicated. The waves or vibrations of this 
ether, according to their various degrees of rapidity, 
cause the phenomena of light, electro-magnetism, etc. 
Pervading, as they do, the substance of metallic or 
other bodies, they make them more or less apt to 
communicate the magneto-electric currents over great 
spaces. Thus, these "ethereal" waves, in a copper 
wire across a continent or an ocean, can cause the 
molecules of the wire, by vibrations of such aston- 
ishing rapidity, to convey messages by sign or by 
sound — that is, by a mode of motion — in an instant 
of time. 

We do not explain ; we suggest. We point out what 
degrees of unimaginable velocity, as well as of real 
" subtility," the almighty and all-wise Creator gives 
to certain material substances or agencies, of whose 
existence modern science discourses so learnedly. 
This, then, is our position : If the Creator of 
matter and spirit has made a substance as spirit- 
like as the universal ether just described, bestowing 
on it such a constitution that it fills all space and 



NOVISSTMA. 261 

interposes itself between the component elements of 
the hardest metallic or mineral bodies, and that it 
flows through every portion of every living organism, 
while it can convey the waves of light, of electricity, 
of sound, of heat, in an instant of time from one 
end of the earth to the other; why could not that 
same Creator endow the human body with similar or 
superior spirit-like properties, enabling it, as well as 
the glorified soul animating it, to pass, at the will of 
the latter, from one end of creation to the other, 
without finding in material space or material masses 
any obstacle to its progress? 

We suggest the analogy, and the inevitable con- 
clusion, and pass on. 

FEOM REASON TO REVELATION. 

To this quality of "subtility" in the glorified 
human body apply the words of St. Paul: "It is 
sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body. 
. . . . The first man was of the earth, earthly: 
the second man, from heaven, heavenly." * 

The Apostle clearly vindicates for Christ's body as 
it exists in heaven, and for those of His elect, 
which are there formed anew after "the image" or 
model of His heavenly body, conditions of existence, 
assimilating their organism as nearly as may be to 
the nature of a spiritual substance. Who will ques- 
tion the power of the Creator to effect such a change? 
Or who will speak of impossibilities in the face of 
the wonderful phenomena and agencies daily discov- 
ered on this earth — the narrow abode of "the first 
Adam" and his progeny? 

*1 Cor., sv, 4447. 



262 jtovissima, 

WHAT THE EARLY FATHERS TAUGHT. 

This "subtility," which makes St. Paul call the 
body recalled to life by the resurrection "a spiritual 
body," was discussed by the early Christian writers 
with that freedom and fullness which characterize 
the works of these great men. Naturally, their 
scientific and physical views were those of their 
contemporaries. But they were not narrow or illib- 
eral views. 

St. Epiphanius, in his exposition and refutation 
of the various heresies about the resurrection, sets 
forth the accepted teaching of the Christian schools 
on the very point we have just now touched. 
""When our Lord Jesus Christ," he says, "arose 
from the dead, He brought up with Him no other 
body than that which He had before, bestowing on it 
in the change a spirit-like subtility, and composing 
therewith one spiritual whole, by which He could 
enter a room through closed doors. This we cannot 
now do with these gross bodies of ours, which have 
not yet been made the subject of such a spiritual 
union." In another place the Saint says: "So the 
body, which was a true body composed of subtile 
elements, was the same that had formerly consisted 
of gross material parts." * 

We translate this passage from the Latin quota- 
tion of Lessius: "He [St. Epiphanius] expresses 
the same opinion in Heresy XX," says the great 
Jesuit theologian. " Where the words spirit-like fine- 
ness of parts, and the absence of grossness are used we 
must not understand him to mean an attenuation of 
the material particles, or a rarefaction of the body — 

*St. Epiphanius., "T)e Hroresibus," Hoercsi LXIV. 



NOVISSIMA. 263 

sucli a change being repugnant to the constitution of 
the flesh and bones. We can only give one meaning 
to his words : that the glorified body is freed from that 
imperfection which prevented it from penetrating 
another — an imperfection that we might call material 
grossness, since we lack appropriate terms in which 
to express this condition of things. Wherefore, a 
body freed from this imperfection may be called 
spirit-like and subtile, because it can penetrate other 
bodies as a spirit does." * 

HEAVENWAED ! HEAVENWAED ! 

Let your imagination soar, allow your fancy to 
borrow all the colors that the material universe in its 
utmost magnificence ever wore, either when God laid 
the foundations of the earth, "when the morning 
stars praised God together, and all the sons of God 
made a joyful melody," f or when heaven, and earth, 
and all creation put on their fairest vesture for the 
new birth of mankind — for the vindication and 
triumph of God's justice, mercy, and unfathomable 
goodness toward men and angels. Can any created 
intelligence understand the grandeur, the glory, the 
immensity, of either of these two worlds which Christ 
leads upwards beyond the orbit of the remotest 
perishable star, to that imperishable and immutable 
empire where He, with the Father and the Holy 
Spirit, is to reign eternally over subjects outnum- 
bering the stars in multitude, outshining them in 
glory, and partaking of God's own felicity and 
eternity? Can the sublimest imagination conceive 
or describe the splendors of that triumphal train? 

* Lessius, "De Summo Bono," L. Ill, c. vii. 
t Job, xxxviii, 7. 



264 BWISSIMA. 



Let us follow them with eve, and mind, and heart, 
as they sing: 

"The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof: 
The world, and all that dwell therein ! 

Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord? 

Or who shall stand in His holy place? 

The innocent in hands, or clean of heart, 

Who hath not taken his soul in vain, 

Nor sworn deceitfully to Ms neighbor, 

He shall receive a blessing from the Lord: 

And mercy from God His Saviour. 

This is the generation of theni that seek Him, 

Of them that seek the face of the God of Jacob. 

Lift up your gates, O ye princes : 

And be ye lifted up, eternal gates! 

And the King of Glory shall enter in. 

Who is this King of Glory? 

The Lord who is strong and mighty: 

The Lord mighty in battle. 

Lift up your gates. ye princes, 

And be ye lifted up, O eternal gates: 

And the King of Glorv shall enter in. 

Who is this King of Glory? 

The Lord of Hosts, He is 'the King of Glory."* 

You who believe in the glorious realities of this 
unseen world, which I have been disclosing to you 
with awe and reverence, oh ! be Godlike in your life 
and your charities! 

* Psalm XXIII. 



NOVISSIMA. 265 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



THE TRIUMPH OF CHRIST. 



" Misericordias Domini in seternum cantabo." 

—Psalm LXXXVIII 
The mercy of the Lord, 
'Twas the subject of the singer — 
'Twas the the theme he loved the best; 

He had known that mercy long. 
Could he measure or define it? 
Oh, no mortal could describe it. 
But he sought to tell the wonder 

And the work of it in song. 

THE CONQUEROR AND HIS TRAIN. 

Can the mind of man conceive, can the tongue or 
hand of man express, the glory of Christ's entrance 
into the heavenly Jerusalem, after this final triumph 
over the enemies of God, and this victorious vindi- 
cation of the divine Justice, Mercy, and Patience? 
He had given His soul to shame, humiliation, and 
agony unutterable upon the cross and in the streets 
of the earthly Jerusalem, that He might thus merit 
for His brethren the everlasting glory, joy, and 
exultation of the new life now beginning; He had 
delivered up His body to the buffeting and the 
blindfolding, to be spit upon by the vilest, to be 
scourged at the pillar and crowned with thorns; He 
had bowed his bleeding shoulders to the wood of the 
cross, and carried it a while up the steep ascent, 
which Isaac had trodden before Him, bearing the 
wood of the Sacrifice ; He had lain down meekly on 
the self-same spot where Isaac had reared the altar 



266 HOVISSIMA. 

and suffered Himself to be bound and laid on the 
pile by the hands of His sorrowing parent. How 
lovingly were the hands and feet of the second Isaac 
stretched out to the cruel nails which there pierced 
them ! How lovingly, from the highest heaven, did 
the eternal Father look down on His Only-Begotten 
Son made Man for us, and for us given up there to 
death the most shameful and the most terrible! 

THE BATTLE AND THE VICTORY. 

The sublime drama of filial obedience and fatherly 
generosity enacted on that mountain-top by Abraham 
and Isaac was only a foreshadowing of that infinite 
love for mankind manifested in that other Sacrifice 
on the same spot, where the Father of angels and 
men offered up His beloved One, and no angel inter- 
fered to stay the sacrifice. 

O charity, charity! O love unspeakable, what a 
sacrifice was that ! And for what a purpose ! 

Try to ascend in spirit to the verge of that most 
glorious realm, where the cross is borne before the 
Crucified, as He takes possession, for Himself and 
His followers, of the empire awarded to Him and 
them by the Father. Forget the spectacular tri- 
umphs of Roman consuls, generals, and emperors; 
forget the Napoleonic pageants of the first years of 
the present century, and the half-million citizen- 
soldiers who — the great civil war over — marched 
through Washington in 1865. Nothing that earth or 
heaven ever beheld can compare with Christ's 
triumphal entry into heaven after the general 
resurrection and the last judgment. 

Who can number the angelic hosts who attend 
Him? Who can count the millions of His Saints 
and elect? 



NOVISSIMA. 267 

THE NUMBERS LIBERATED BY THE VICTOR. 

How long, from the present year of grace, will 
human life be prolonged till the last babe is born, 
and the last human being gathered into judgment by 
death? Will it be ten thousand years? or a hun- 
dred thousand years? or two hundred thousand? 
Who will dare to limit the experiment of human 
free-will upon this earth to his own narrow concep- 
tions of time? Christ did not die on the cross to 
extend the saving benefit of His truth and charity 
to a fragment only of the race. And when, in His 
own appointed time, all nations will have heard and 
embraced the Gospel; who will presume to limit to 
one generation, or even to a hundred, the reign of 
Christian morality, the growth of a true Christian 
civilization ? 

CHIEF OBSTACLE TO THE CHURCH'S INCREASE IN 
THE PAST. 

Down to the close of this nineteenth century, the 
natural, lawful, logical action of the Gospel and the 
Church on mankind and civil society has been 
marred chiefly by that feudalism which sprang up 
after the fall of the Roman empire, and was im- 
planted by the Barbarians in every part of Christen- 
dom. The Church and the supernatural life which 
she imparts to the children of God have struggled 
on for more than a thousand years against the hostile 
spirit and oppressive might of feudalism — just as 
a magnificent tree of the Southern forests lives on in 
spite of some mighty creeper which wound itself long 
ago around its young trunk, grew with its growth, 
fed upon its substance, and would have strangled it 



268 KOVISSIMA. 

in its embrace had the life of the noble tree been a 
mere natural life. 

Feudalism is old, decrepit, dying. But the Church 
is ever young. The parasites which had wound 
themselves round her, and seemed to be to her a 
support and an ornament, are being cut away and 
detached, not without rending away a part of the 
bark of the lordly tree. Patience ! The separation 
only means freedom, new life, vigor, and beauty. 

PROSPECTIVE INCREASE IN THE FUTURE. 

Give us the blessed and glorious era when the 
Church, at liberty to speak to all the tribes of earth, 
to set before them the story of Christ's infinite love 
for mankind, will make them embrace and practice 
the law of life, and look up to the eternal promises 
as the sole reward worthy of true piety, devotion to 
duty, and self-sacrifice — as the only goal fit to tempt 
the ambition of men and women regenerated in the 
Blood of Jesus Christ. Who will limit to a few 
centuries this era of liberty for the Church, this true 
millennium — extending, it may be, over ten or 
twenty times a thousand years — during which Christ 
will indeed reign on earth over the hearts, and 
minds, and lives of men? This, in one dim shape 
or another, has been the dream, the hope, the 
prophetic instinct of all Christian ages from the 
beginning. Let us not belittle God and His plans 
by measuring with our own tape-line the road over 
which He intends the human race to travel. He is 
the Everlasting, the Infinite, the Eternal. Why 
should we say: "Within this narrow circle shalt 
Thou display the wonders of Thy goodness and Thy 
wisdom. Here is the limit beyond which human 
existence may not go." 



NOVISSIMA. 269 

Let us leave to that Love Eternal to work out Its 
own designs. What are a million of years to Him 
who knew no beginning and who can know no end? 

THE MIGHTY FLOCK AROUND THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 

So, then, around our King, Christ, in His supreme 
triumph, our imagination may behold glorified human 
beings in body and soul numerous enough to people 
all the orbs and clusters of worlds in the firmament 
above and around us; myriads of the Saints and 
elect, vieing in number with the angelic hosts, and, 
in the splendor of their re-born bodies, outshining 
the sun itself. 

Oh, the prey won by the cross from hell and the 
grave! the spoil obtained by these pierced hands 
from the prince of this lower world and his allies, 
sin and death ! Oh, the immense flock, appalling 
the mind in its immensity, which the bleeding feet 
of that Good Shepherd sought far and wide ! 

" And now He brings them, gathers them, at length 
— at length into His fold, and around the feet of His 
Father! 

THE GODLIKE PURPOSE OF CHRIST'S SUFFERINGS. 

To impart to the myriads of myriads of human 
bodies, which shine and gravitate around His own, 
the splendor and the spirit-like qualities described in 
the last chapter; w T as it unworthy of the all-fore- 
seeing Son of God to give up His body to the cold 
of the manger, to the long fast of forty days and 
nights, to the night-long vigils on hill-top or desert, 
after the consuming labors of a missionary day, to 
the night of torture and humiliation in the house of 
Annas, and to all the sufferings of that dreadful 
morrow, ending with the three hours upon the 
cross ? 



270 xovissniA. 

To bestow Oil every human soul gathered into His 
kingdom the bliss and glory of the Beatifie Vision, 
and a share in the very life and eternity of the 
Triune Godhead; was it too dear a price to endure 
all the shame of His Passion, all the ignominy 
heaped upon His head by the nation assembled in 
Jerusalem for their most solemn feast, and the 
unutterable agony of these awful three hours of 
lingering death on the cross, while the multitude 
scoffed, derided, blasphemed around? 

So, advance the victorious banner of our King. 
Let the cross flame high before the advancing ranks 
of the two great armies, which follow His triumphal 
car borne by seraphim and cherubim, where the 
"strong woman," * who stood by His cross in that 
agony, now shares His triumph, the mother of the 
new life, the second Eve and parent of all Christ's 
redeemed. Patriarchs, Apostles, martyrs, confessors 
and virgins — all ye sublime souls, who, before Christ 
and after Him, have kept living before the world the 
ideal of the Godlike life which man can lead here 
below — surround the throne of your Chief. 

THE BAXDS OF HIS CLOSEST IMITATOES. 

Pause awhile, and contemplate, as the Conqueror 
of death and hell advances, and the feet, the bodily 
feet of His followers, tread for the first time the soil 
of His heavenly empire— the sacred cohorts of those 
whose pre-eminence in sanctity gives them the right 
to be nearest to His Person — holy men and holy 
women gathered from every generation since the 
World began, and from every clime beneath the sun • 
Adam and Eve, whose tears of sorrow and anguish 
fell, during so many centuries, on the furrows in 

* Proverbs, xxxi* 10i 



NOVISSIMA. 271 

which they sowed their grain, while the earth, on 
which their great sin had brought a curse, produced 
a great crop of iniquity and inhumanity; and then 
Seth, and Henoch, and Noe, with their families, who 
kept their souls above the rising and resistless tide 
of surroudding corruption; then Abraham and his 
descendants, with their checkered fortunes, their 
alternations of fidelity to God and desertion of His 
law. But what a glorious harvest from the Hebrew 
race He has gathered into His everlasting home! 
And then count, since the midnight glory and the 
songs of angels thrilled the shepherds around Beth- 
lehem, how many, from age to age, have trodden in 
the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth, in voluntary 
poverty, suffering, and self-sacrifice, to santify their 
own souls and help on His work of salvation! 
Count, if you can, the holy men and women who are 
the spiritual progeny of Anthony and Benedict, of 
Bruno and Romuald and Bernard, of Francis and 
Dominick, of Angela de Merici and Ignatius Loyola 
and Vincent of Paul. How many other glorious 
religious families glitter, like the clusters of the 
Milky Way, among these great orders, the foster 
parents of every Christian generation, the blessed 
auxiliaries of the Church in saving and sanctifying 
the world! 

THE TE DEUM SUNG IN THAT PROCESSION. 

We have often heard in seasons of great joy the 
Christian hearts of the people pouring out their 
gratitude in the holy place, and around the altar of 
the Lamb, for some mighty benefit received from on 
high. Even then the sublime chant of the Te Deum 
Laudamus was an earthly echo of the perpetual 



272 NOVISSIMA. 

hymn sung in heaven. But, on the return of Christ 
triumphant into heaven at the head of the Church, 
complete in the number of her children, and crowned 
with the perfection of life immortal, what strain 
more appropriate than that sung so often in exile? 

"Thee, God, we praise; 
Thee we proclaim the only Lord. 
Thee, Father eternal, the whole earth adores. 
To thee do all the angels ; to Thee do the heavens 
With all the powers of the universe; 
To Thee do the cherubim and seraphim. 
With unceasing voice sing forth : 
Holy, holy, holy, 
Lord God of Hosts!" 

Oh, yes; He is the God of holiness, and heaven 
is the eternal abode of the holy. And see what 
hosts of the holy surround Him there! 

' ' Filled are the heavens and the earth 
With the greatness of Thy glory. 
Thee the glorious apostolic choir ; 
Thee the blessed band of Prophets ; 
Thee the white-robed army of martyrs 
Praise. 

Thee through all earth's bounds 
The holy Church proclaims 
The Father of Majesty Infinite; 
Worthy of adoration Thy true and only Son, 
Together with the Holy Spirit, the Comforter." 

So may we behold them in spirit — these two 
mighty worlds in eternity — hymning the sovereign 
greatness and glory of the Triune Deity. And then 
hear them as they address the Son : 

"Thou, Christ, art the King of Glory. 
Thou from eternity art the Son of the Father ! 
Thou, in order to liberate man, didst take man's 
Nature on Thee, not recoiling from the Virgin's womb ! 
Thou, when death's sharp dart was broken, 
To Thy believers openedst wide the realms of heaven. 
Thou it is who thronest in glory 
At the right hand of Thy Father." 



btovissima. 273 



THE WORK OF MERCY CONSUMMATED. 

The remainder of St. Ambrose's glorious hymn is 
but the prayer of sinners expecting judgment, of 
exiles asking to be safely guided homeward, of chil- 
dren anxious to be gathered beneath the wings of 
Almighty Love and Mercy. 

The work of mercy is now complete. She has 
not only removed from Christ's elect all the ills of 
earth and time, but conferred on them all the good 
things in God's own power — Himself and His most 
blissful life. Hence the blessed multitudes can w T ell 
sing David's glorious psalm : 

"The mercies of the Lord I will sing forever; 

For thou hast said : ' Mercy shall be built up forever in 

the heavens ; 
Thy truth shall be prepared in them.' 

The heavens shall confess Thy wonders, O Lord, 
And Thy truth in the Church of the Saints. 
For who in the clouds can be compared to the Lord? 
Or who among the sons of God shall be like to God ? 
God, who is glorified in the assembly of the Saints : 
Great and terrible above all them that are about Him. 
Lord God of Hosts, who is like to Thee ? 
Thou art mighty, Lord, and Thy truth is round about 
Thee. 

Thine are the heavens, and thine is the earth : 

The world and the fullness thereof Thou hast founded : 

The north and the sea Thou hast created. 

Justice and judgment are the preparation of Thy throne. 

Mercy and truth shall go before Thy face : 

Blessed be the people that knoweth jubilation ! 

They shall walk, Lord, in the light of Thy countenance : 

And in Thy name they shall rejoice all the day, 

And in Thy justice they shall be exalted."* 

* Psalm LXXXVIII, 1-17. 



274 hovissima. 

JOY EXHAUSTS OUR MORTAL FRAME. 

O joys of eternity, whose duration is measured by 
no revolution of earth or sun, what occurrence of 
time, what mighty outburst of popular or national 
sentiment can give us even a faint and shadowy notion 
of your fullness, your immensity, your height, and 
your depth? Our senses are dulled, our bodily 
strength is exhausted by a single day's celebration 
here below, in which the great waves of popular 
enthusiasm sweep by like the roaring, rushing waves 
of a great river hastening toward a precipice. The 
spectacle of a hundred thousand men in military or in 
holiday attire dazzles and dazes the eye as they pass 
before it. The most delightful or elevating music 
ever composed by the genius of man, or ever exe- 
cuted by the most perfect human skill, expressing 
itself in divinest song or exquisite instrumentation, 
can only be endured for half a day uninterruptedly, 
and may not be repeated day after day, like a succes- 
sion of intoxicating banquets. In this life our 
capacity to receive pleasure, like our capacity to 
give it, is sadly limited. The human spirit, while 
on earth, is a small narrow-necked vase, into which 
the delicious liquor of joy and bliss must be poured 
carefully, drop by drop. Even when plunged in a 
deep and wide river, it can only be filled drop by 
drop ; and when its capacity is exhausted, the waves 
above, beneath, and around it sweep by, profitless 
and unheeded. The heart of man here below, the 
heart of the best and the most gifted, is a beautiful 
and delicate flower, whose envelope alone receives 
the invisible droplets of the night-dew, and which a 
down-pour of rain overwhelms, destroys, or casts 
crushed and lifeless on the ground. Even the sun- 



NOVISSIMA. 275 

light and warmth must be tempered to its frail and 
exquisite texture. 

HEART AND SOUL ENLARGED FOR HEAVENLY JOYS. 

But in the life to come, and when the resurrection 
sends men back to heaven in the fullness and per- 
fection of bodily and spiritual power, not even the 
infinite greatness, light, and loveliness of the Deity, 
seen face to face, will overwhelm or crush the soul. 
As we have said repeatedly, the elevation and en- 
largement of the soul's capacity and power are a 
something so divine as to bring the creature near 
the Creator — to make of the human spirit a being 
so far above our present conceptions as to entitle it 
to be called divine. This sharing of the divine 
nature and the divine life is a fact expressly revealed 
in Scripture, and which we are bound unhesitatingly 
to believe, while discussing it reverently. 

But the elevation and enlargement of the bodily 
powers and senses of man's entire organism, after 
the resurrection, are to be co-ordinate with those of 
the soul. The Innocents martyred by Herod's 
cruelty, and which his hatred of Christ caused him 
to baptize in their own blood, will preserve their 
identity in heaven. Their bodies will be ever the 
bodies of babes, without the helplessness and infirm- 
ities of infancy; their souls will have the maturity 
and wisdom, the supernatural fullness of knowledge 
necessarily bestowed by the Beatific Vision. Eevered 
evermore by the entire body of the elect, their minds 
will be the minds of the angels, their bodies en- 
dowed with the qualities bestowed on those of the 
highest Saints, their hearts enlarged to the capacity 
of loving and holding the Infinite God, and their 



276 KTOVISSIMA-. 

tongues loosened to sound and sing eternally the 
praises of Christ and the Father. * 

ALL OUR SENSES ELEVATED AND PERFECTED. 

The sense of beauty and harmony, in forms, and 
colors, and sounds, is one of those peculiar to human 
nature. It is at the very foundation of art. In 
heaven this sense shall be perfected and purified in 
all the blessed. Kot merely shall we have there the 
faculty of enjoying what is most exquisite in physical 
form, most beautiful in color, and most ravishing in 
harmony, but we shall be able to pour out our whole 
soul in song, j c* 

THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES. 

What shall be in heaven, at the dawn of that 
eternal day of the new life, which shall never know 
evening or night, the rapturous harmony of that 
song resounding through all the spheres of the celes- 
tial kingdom, and celebrating the Father's mercy, 
the Son's love and power, and the fostering provi- 
dence of the Spirit of Truth and Charity ! c J c 

We try to find in the inspired canticles of Holy 
Writ, as sung in the solemn services of the Church, 
and applied to the triumphs of the Church in heaven, 
some of these divine strains, some echoes of the 
harmonies of the city of God on high, which may 
lift us upward to a conception or contemplation of 
the Reality. 

Hear the Royal Prophet : 

Sing unto the Lord a new song ! 
Sing unto the Lord all the earth ! 

* In the verse, Apocalypse, vi, 9, " I saw under the altar the souls of 
them that were slain for the word of God" is applied to the Holy Inno- 
cents by the Church. In the beautiful hymn of their feast, December 29, 
they are spoken of as " little ones playing beneath the altar with their 
palms and crowns." 



novissima. 277 

Aye; let all these crowned and white-robed 
myriads, whom earth has sent to heaven as her 
fairest flowers and richest fruit, lift their voices 
together in that glorious canticle : 

Sing ye to the Lord, and bless His name ! 
Show forth His salvation from day to day ! 

As if all the cycles of eternity could not suffice 
to exalt that name of Jesus, and to set forth the 
wonderful means by which He accomplished our 
salvation. Jews and Gentiles are confounded in 
those adoring throngs, and sing with one acclaim : 

''Declare His glory among the Gentiles, 
His wonders among all people; 
For the Lord is great, and exceedingly to be praised. 

Praise and beauty are before Him: 

Holiness and majesty in His sanctuary. 

Bring ye to the Lord, O ye kindreds of the Gentiles, 

Bring ye to the Lord glory and honor: 

Bring to the Lord glory unto His name ! ' ' * 



Not until this day of days dawned upon God's 
fairest creation — that other universe situated beyond 
the most distant stars— and ushered in the eternity 
of the new life, has the soil of the heavens of heavens 
been trodden by human foot, save only His who trod 
alone the wine-press for us, and the Mother's, who 
stood by Him, dying her raiment also in the purple 
blood of the grape. But now these Two have with 
Them all the immense family of the children of God. 
How every eye and mind among these countless 
millions can now take in the beauty, the magnificence, 
the splendor, of the new world which is to be their 
home. Even the blessed souls who, before the 

* Psalm XCV 3-8. 



278 NOVISSIMA. 

resurrection, enjoyed the clear sight of the divine 
Essence and the joys of paradise, have now super- 
added enjoyment unspeakable in being able to see 
with their bodily eyes that glorious masterpiece of 
the Almighty's power and love; to gaze upon its un- 
utterable loveliness; upon the ever-changing beauties 
of the supernal Eden, with its flowers, its fragrance, 
its colors; in being able to hear the music of all 
these voices attuned to one perfect accord of har- 
mony, one divine and exhaustless unity and variety 
of theme ; in finding body and spirit steeped in that 
celestial atmosphere of light that dazzles not, of 
warmth which cannot overheat or weary. 
King David had sung of old : 

One thing I have asked of the Lord, 

This will I seek after — 

That I may dwell in the house of the Lord 

All the days of my life : 

That I may see the delight of the Lord, 

And may visit His temple. 

My heart hath said to Thee, My face hath sought Thee : 
Thy face, Lord, will I seek. * 

And elsewhere: 

The Lord ruleth me, and I shall want nothing; 
He hath set me in a place of pasture, 
He hath brought me up to the refreshing waters, 
He hath turned my soul [toward their delight.] 

THE BEAUTY OF THAT REGION. 

The spring-tide glory of Lebanon is given to that 
land of the living, as well as the beauty of Carmel 
and Sharon. Whatever men have ever beheld on 
this earth, beneath the tropics or in the temvperate 
zones, of all that is most enchanting or sublime in 
the prospects of land or sea, of lake or river, of 

* Psalm XXVI, 4-8. 



KOVISSIMA. 279 

forest or wood, of sunny verdant slopes or peaceful 
valleys ; whatever of beauty the Creator has there 
displayed in tree or shrub, in all that flowers in field 
or garden — that, and much more than that, in a 
variety and a profusion of which He alone has 
the secret, has His hand scattered throughout that 
heavenly world. 

HOW FLOWEES SPRANG UP WHERE ST. FRANCIS 
WALKED. 

There exists in Italy and in Spain, wherever 
St. Francis of Assisi traveled, borne along, like a 
seraph, lent to earth for a while to breathe a message 
of divine love to the nations, most touching and 
most beautiful traditions relating to his influence 
over all animated nature. In the Diocese of Barce- 
lona, it is said, and still believed, that in a desert 
glen into which the Saint sometimes withdrew to 
pray and meditate, the very earth became clothed 
with fertility, beauty, and flowers of most exquisite 
hue and fragrance. And the very springs in which 
he quenched his thirst and blessed were endowed 
with a healing virtue. All who have read his won- 
derful life know how the very birds and beasts were 
drawn to that Christ-like man, whose gentleness 
seemed to charm and hold them spell-bound. What 
wonder if beneath those feet, which bore the stigmata, 
or bleeding wounds, of our Crucified Lord, the earth 
put forth its sweetest flowers as he passed along, 
bearing on his person the image of the Saviour? 
What wonder if these nail-pierced hands could charm 
the fierceness of the wolf, or tame .the eagle to his 
will, or beckon the birds to tree and hedge on his 
path to join with that seraphic soul in singing the 
praises of God the Most High? 



HOYISSIMA. 

Iii Milan, a touching reminder of this heavenly 

man, and his supernatural loveliness and goodness, 
was the feast which was celebrated formerly in that 
portion of the city which surrounded the Church of 
San Francesco, then the most splendid of all the 
Milanese temples. During the three first da; 
October all the streets, squares, and thoroughfares 
of that quarter were transformed into a paradise 
of flowers. Ah! memories of the Christian ag -. 
reverence for heroic of soul, and the pure and 
heavenly in life, how they strive to blot you out 
from the hearts and minds of the people, from the 
ruined shrines and desecrated soil of Italy! 

"What must it be in the true Eden on high as 
Christ advances with His triumphal train? Will 
not the very soil beneath the feet of the Crucified put 
forth flowers of the heavenliest hues and fragrance ? 

Not without a purpose shall nature in these spheres 
bear unceasingly the alternate bloom and fruit of all 
these most beautiful creatures of the vegetable world, 
which are. here below, the delight of the fair-: 
our bodily senses. Does not He. as Man. take- 
pleasure in all the lovely creations with which He. 
as the Son, covers, and clothes, and adorns the face 
of inanimate nature? And will not His children, in 
that most magnificent of worlds, not share the en- 
joyment of their Master and Model, and adore the 
footprints of the Creator in all this wealth of beauty 
with which He decks out the heavens of heavens? 

GODLIKE SPIRITS A2n~D GODLIKE ME5f. 

As we contemplate, therefore, the triumphal prog- 
ress of the inhabitants of these united empires : 
heaven-— the angelic and the human — let us open 



novissima. 281 

wide to the overwhelming truth, to the splendor of 
this most real of all realities, every avenue of our 
souls, in the angelic hosts, as they pass by, mar- 
shaled in their hierarchies, there is not a glorious 
spirit whom men here below would not deem worthy 
almost of adoration if they could only behold him 
in his own native beauty, or witness the display of 
his might, his wisdom, his goodness. But these 
sublime beings, from the highest to the lowest, only 
reflect and set forth to our intelligence, in ascending 
and descending degrees, the perfections, attributes, 
and glory of the Creator. Compared to them, 
in their nature and moral excellence, the popular 
deities of the heathen world were like the rude 
delineations of the human form made by our North- 
western savages, as compared with the sculptures of 
the Parthenon and the designs and paintings of 
Lionardo da Vinci. 

More than that. As we may behold in spirit, 
following close in the footsteps of the God-Man, 
Jesus, all those successive hosts of His human kin- 
dred, each member of them perfect in body and in 
soul, and adorned with all natural and supernatural 
excellence, how far the lowliest and least in the king- 
dom of heaven surpasses in goodness, greatness, and 
power the fabled deities worshiped by Greece and 
Italy, by Egyptian and Babylonian, by the dreamy 
millions of Buddha's followers in India, China, and 
Japan ! 

Impeccable, infallible, immortal, impassible — with 
bodies made like the most spiritual substances, with 
souls transformed by knowledge and love to the very 
likeness of God Himself, and made partakers of His 
life and happiness — how far above the conceptions 



282 Hoyissbia. 

of pagan poets or philosophers, when they describe 
the Godhead, is the height of grandeur and glory to 
which Christ has raised His own! 

And this triumphal entry into heaven of Christ 
and His angelic and human followers, is only the 
prelude to what He describes Himself as the wed- 
ding feast which the King of kings has prepared for 
His Son. These are the bridals of the Lamb which 
were shown afar off, in the Apocalypse, to the be- 
loved Disciple, who had reclined on the breast of 
Jesus in the Last Supper. This glorious assem- 
blage of the two heavenly worlds is the Church 
Triumphant, the bride of the Lamb; and not till 
now, not till the resurrection has united every human 
spirit with the flesh it had cast off in death, was 
Christ's bride ready for the everlasting espousals, or 
could this perfect union of the Infinite God with our 
deified humanity take place. 

THE DIVINE EEALITY. 

To poor sinners yet in the flesh, and endeavoring 
to lift themselves up by thought and meditation to 
some shadowy notion of the Eternal Reality, even 
the shadows which conceal while outlining that 
Reality Itself overwhelm the mind by the forms they 
reveal and the splendors which struggle through the 
mist of our intelligence. Even to the beloved Dis- 
ciple, St. John, when lifted up in spirit to the ever- 
lasting gates, the veiled vision of the place, of its 
inhabitants, and the life therein led, was too much 
for mortal intelligence to bear, for human language 
to express. His efforts to describe what he has 
beheld are like those of one intoxicated or half- 
delirious to convey to others the impressions of 
what he beholds and feels: 



HOVTSSIMA. 283 

"After these things, I heard, as it were, the voice 
of much people in heaven, saying : Alleluia ! Salva- 
tion, and glory, and power is to our God 

And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multi- 
tude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the 
voice of great thunders, saying Alleluia [praise ye 
the Lord.] For the Lord our God the Almighty 
hath reigned. Let us be glad, and rejoice, and give 
glory to Him; for the marriage of the Lamb is 
come, and His spouse hath prepared herself. And 
it is granted to her that she should clothe herself 
with fine linen glittering and white. For the fine 
linen are the justifications of Saints. 

"And he [the angel] said to me: [ Write: 
Blessed are they that are called to the Supper of the 
Lamb/ And he saith to me : ' These ivords of God 
are true.' 

"And I fell down befon£sjhis feet to adore him. 
And he said to me : i See thou do it not ! I am thy 
fellow-servant, and of thy brethren who have the 
testimony of Jesus. Adore God!"-' * 

So much for the mighty multitudes and their 
Alleluias, sounding like the voice of many waters 
falling from cataract to cataract, or of thunders re- 
echoed from all the clouds of heaven and the moun- 
tains of earth. 

Now read what St. John says of the mighty 
Victor over death and hell as He advances before 
the hosts he leads in happy captivity : 

"And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white 
horse : and He that sat upon him was called Faithful 
and True, and with justice doth He judge and fight. 

* Apoc, xix, 1-10. 



284 KOVissiMA. 

And His eyes were as a flame of fire; and on His 
head were many diadems, and He had a name written 
which no one knoweth but Himself. And He was 
clothed with a garment sprinkled with blood: and 

His name is called The Word of God 

And He treadeth the wine-press of the fierceness of 
the wrath of God the Almighty. And He hath on 
His garment and on His thigh written, King of 
Kings and Lord of Lords." * 

Take away from this descriptive passage the gor- 
geous imagery in which the Eastern peoples clothe 
their thoughts, especially in poetry, and in that 
highest form of poetical inspiration, prophecy, and 
enough will remain to satisfy even our cold and calm 
northern intellects as to the grandeur of the pageant, 
when Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, 
enters heaven, leading with Him the innumerable 
multitudes which He^fedeemed from eternal death, 
when, alone, with His Mother to encourage Him to 
conquer, He did "tread the wine-press of the fierce- 
ness of the wrath of God the Almighty." Let Him 
now, in that realm in which all our present notions 
and relations of space and time are totally changed, 
do for our liberated and redeemed humanity what 
the noblest, the most magnificent of lovers would do 
for his bride — set forth for her, in the most superb 
of palaces, the most sumptuous and regal of banquets. 

That is a feast which is to last forever. It is 
called a " supper" because it closes the festivities 
and pageants of the day. It comes at the end of 
time, and fills with its magnificences and delights all 
the cycles of eternity. 

* Apoc, xix, 11-16. 



KovissimA. 285 

So, as in beginning this book we spoke of the 
house of God upon earth, and of the Sacramental 
Bread which the Church, the mother of His children, 
daily breaks to them at her table, let us now see 
how the Reality in every point fulfills and exceeds 
the figure and the pledge. 



CHAPTER XIX. 



THE UTMOST GOAL OF HUMAN ASPIRATION 
AND PROGRESS. 



DRINKING IMMORTALITY AND DIVINITY. 

They shall be inebriated with the plenty of Thy house : 
And Thou shalt make them drink of the torrent of thy pleasure ; 
For with Thee is the fountain of life: 
And in Thy light we shall see the light. 

—Psalm XXXV, 9-10. 

"We must not fancy," says Cardinal Bellarmine, 
in speaking of the Nuptial Supper of the Lamb, 
"that there shall be in heaven anything like the 
banquet set forth here on earth by sovereigns when 
they celebrate their bridals. In the kingdom of 
heaven we shall be like God's angels, who can neither 
marry nor be married, and who need not to feed on 
aliments necessary to our bodily sustenance. That 
Supper of the Lamb will, therefore, be filled with a 
display of wealth, of delights, of ornaments, and cf 
splendor such as shall befit the condition of the 
blessed. The matter is set before us at present in 



286 NOVissnrA. 

that form, because our eyes can see on earth nothing 
better or greater. But from what is said about it 
we should learn that the heavenly Banquet shall 
transcend in excellence all our earthly feasts as much 
as heaven itself is above the earth, and as much as 
God, whose care it will be to prepare the Feast, sur- 
passes in power and riches all mortal potentates." * 

A WEDDING FEAST THE IDEAL OF JOY AND 
PLEASUEE. 

Truly, by meditating on what we are familiar with 
in this life, on what we know as conveying to the 
minds of all the idea of what is most magnificent, 
most joyous, most delightful, we can ascend to the 
contemplation of heavenly things. A wedding feast 
among the lowliest as among the highest, among the 
poor as among the wealtlry, is an occasion for the 
display of hospitality, of the utmost outlay, and of 
generosity to the needy poor. If our Lord, in pre- 
paring our minds to conceive the loftiest idea of 
that life eternal, after the resurrection, in which all 
found faithful to God shall enjoy with Him and in 
Him such supreme felicity as Almighty Love can 
bestow, compares that life eternal to a royal wedding 
supper, it is because such a supper is on earth what 
men consider to be all that is most splendid and 
pleasing to the sense. Bellarmine, who was wont, 

* Bellarmine, "On the Eternal Felicity of the Saints," Book V, c. v.: 
Neque Tamen suspicari debernus, in cffllo futuram esse ccenam, qualeni 
hie habent magni principes cum nuptias celebrant: siquidem in ccelo 
erimus sicut Angeli Dei, qui neque nubant, neque ducunt uxores, neque 
vescuntur cibis ad vitani mortalem sustentandam necessariis. Erit 
ergo ccena plena divitus, et delicus, et omamentis, et gloria Statui 
Beatorum conveniens. Haec enim dicuntur nobis hoc tempore, quia 
meliora et majora non vidimus. Sed ab his discere debemus, tanto fore 
ccenam illam nostris ccenis quamvis lautissimis meliorem quanto coelum 
distat a terra; et quanto Deus qui illam parabit, potentia et divitus 
mortalibus Regibus praestat. 



stoyissima. 287 

toward the end of his life, to meditate yearly in soli- 
tude on this great subject of eternal felicity, says, 
in the same chapter, that kings in their nuptial 
banquets are at pains to unite, for their guests' enjoy- 
ment, all that can delight the senses, all that can 
show forth this world's wealth, power, and glory. 
He quotes, as an instance of this, the great banquet 
which Assuerus prepared for the princes who gov- 
erned under him the one hundred and twenty-seven 
provinces of his vast empire. The sumptuosity and 
magnificence displayed on this occasion were deemed 
by the King of Persia to be the most convincing 
proof he could give these satraps of his greatness 
and power. 

THE WEDDINGS OF THE POOE. 

We need not, however, go to the palaces of sover- 
eigns to obtain a clear knowledge of what a wedding 
supper or banquet may be, when the bridegroom or 
the bride, or their parents, possess such wealth as to 
permit a lavish expenditure for the entertainment. 
As we are anxious, from what strikes and gratifies 
the sense on earth, to form a true estimate of what 
the divine pleasures of the heavenly life will be, let 
us glance at our ideal wedding feast here below. 

Who has not seen the homes of the wealthy 
decorated and prepared for a wedding? Everything 
in architecture and decoration which can charm the 
eye and satisfy the cultivated taste — painting, statu- 
ary, hangings, lights, the rarest flowers, the richest 
plate, — all is there. And to the pleasure of the eye 
is added that of that other sense which the most 
fragrant odors gratify. The most delicate perfumes 
and subtile essences of the East impregnate the air 



288 NOVISSDtA. 

without loading it. And there is heavenly music, 
the blending of orchestral harmony with the divine 
melody of human voices, lifting the soul to the 
spheres. Of the lower and more animal sense- I 
need say nothing, and yet it is to them that the 
crowd attends most. What profusion of viands, of 
liquors, of fruits, and all manner of delicacies in- 
vented to tempt and stimulate the appetite! 

And in the banqueting-room the splendor and 
varied richness of apparel of the guests as well as of 
the bride and bridegroom and their friends — the 
finest cloths, the rarest and richest silks and stuffs, 
the blending of lovely colors, with the flashing of 
gems, and the glitter of burnished gold and silver — 
who can describe all this that has not seen it? And 
to those who have seen it often what need of de- 
scribing it? 

THE WEDDIXGS OF THE GEEAT. 

Among the mighty and the wealthy, too, these 
nuptial festivities and costly entertainments are often 
prolonged day after day. So did Assuerus feast his 
subject princes and nobles for one hundred and four 
score days in succession. And this first series of 
entertainments ended, the king " invited all the 
people that were found in Susan [the capital], from 
the greatest to the least, and commanded a feast to 
be made seven days in the court of the garden, and 
of the wood, which was planted by the care and the 
hand of the king. And there were hung up on every 
side sky-colored, and green, and violet hangings,, 
fastened with cords of silk and purple, which were 
put into rings of ivory, and were upheld by marble 
columns. The beds [on which the guests reclined 



NOVISSIMA. 289 

at table] also were of gold and silver, placed in order 
upon a floor paved with porphyry and white marble, 
which was embellished with painting of wonderful 
variety. And they that were invited drank in 
golden cups, and the meats were brought in divers 
vessels one after another. Wine also in abundance 
and of the best was presented, as was worthy of the 
king's magnificence." * 

THE WEDDING SUPPER OF THE LAMB. 

Coming now to the heavenly Banquet — the Supper 
of the Lamb — what are we to understand by it? 

This: The work of Christ being completed, 
having gathered into His heavenly kingdom the last 
born among His brethren on earth, and the Church 
of earth being merged in that of heaven, a new era, 
as it were, begins for that blessed society above, 
composed of angels, and of men now, like Christ and 
His Virgin Mother, enjoying in eternity the twofold 
bliss of body and of soul. Until the resurrection 
day, earth held the sacred dust of the human body 
from Adam to his latest descendant. Now, at the 
Creator's word, that dust has been reanimated, and 
the elect of the race have entered heaven, each 
happy soul bearing with it, as a spoil recovered from 
death and the grave, the body in which it had lived, 
labored, suffered for Christ. That restored body is 
made in all things like His, differing only from His 
in degree of glory, and all the Saints, both in body 
and in soul, differing from each other according to 
their degree of merit as " star differeth from star in 
glory." t 

* Esther, i, 5-7. 1 * Cor., xv, 11. 



290 SOVISSIMA. 

THE NUMBER OF THE GUESTS. 

What numbers death, in the last age of the world, 
added to the ranks of the blessed, we know not. 
AVe may believe that our dear Lord will not, in 
those last days, withdraw His mercy, His Spirit, and 
His saving grace from the children of men. Among 
Christ's triumphal train, as He re-enters heaven, 
His glorious labors ended, we can behold millions 
who never till then tasted the joys of paradise. 

Confining our contemplation, for the moment, to 
that Church of which Christ is the Head, to that 
glorified human society whose members claim Him 
as Brother and King, it now comes into His heavenly 
empire not only complete in its numbers, but com- 
plete in its nature. For all men in these blessed 
ranks are complete in body and in soul. Until now 
angels and blessed souls in heaven have only looked 
upon the glorified human countenances of the second 
Adam and the second Eve. Now our first parents 
follow Christ and His Mother in that triumphal pro- 
cession, bearing with them to the throne of God the 
bodies which His own hand had fashioned in the 
beginning; and how fairer, brighter, more glorious 
they shine there than they did in Eden before sin 
had poisoned their blood and dimmed the lustre of 
both body and spirit! So shine the white-robed 
ranks of the generations Avho follow our great 
parents as they march on, glittering wave after 
wave, a mighty ocean stream beheld at dawn from 
a mountain top near the shore, when the sun lias 
just come out of his tabernacle, and the East is 
resplendent with all its many-colored glories, and 
the living waves bound after each other, reflecting 



KOVISSIMA. 291 

the magnificence of heaven, and all the shining ocean 
lifts up its voice in praise of the Lord of the earth 
and the sea. Oh! look at that stream of glorified 
and exultant human life as it flows through the 
land of the living ! 

The Lord hath reigned ; He is clothed with beauty : 
The Lord is clothed with strength, and hath girded Himself. 
For He hath established the world which shall not be moved. 
Thy throne is prepared from of old : Thou art from everlasting. 
The floods have lifted up, Lord, the floods have lifted up their 
voice. 

The floods have lifted up their waves 

With the voice of many waters ; 

Wonderful are the surges of the sea, 

Wonderful is the Lord on high.* 

THE PEOCESSION TO THE BANQUET HALL. 

These are the human generations marching in 
after Christ to share the Banquet set forth for Him 
and them by the Father. Try to use in advance 
these spiritual powers which- enable the just in 
heaven to behold God's immense empire and its 
inhabitants as one now can take in the interior of 
the largest edifice or of the vastest banqueting-room 
with its guests. Fear not to assign to Christ some 
central position, toward which every eye can be 
directed, and from which His divine countenance 
can shed the radiance of its love over every face in 
those far-stretching ranks beneath, all round, above, 
tier upon tier of enthroned men and women, millions 
multiplied by millions, drinking in the ecstatic bliss 
of that Vision divine, that clear sight of the Deity, 
whose presence is like the tempered light and vital 
warmth of the sun, pervading, penetrating all. 

* Psalm xen, 14. 



292 xovlssima. 

"where the suppeb is set out 

Put away from you the thought of an earthly city, 
no matter how great or how splendid. Our earth 
itself, were its entire surface to be spread out by 
Omnipotenee into the floor of one vast edifice, and 
were the relations of space to be observed with 
regard to the glorified bodies of the elect, would be 
insufficient for the numbers who sit down with the 
Lamb at His "Wedding Feast. And the angelic 
society, incomparably more numerous than the 
human, is to share that Banquet. Where shall the 
imagination find place for them ? 

Ah! our imagination has in it something of the 
infinite! It can wing its flight high, and, from that 
height, enable the soul to see. and to see clearly, 
beyond the circumference of this visible universe. 
Let us force it now to contemplate that real abode 
of the angels and Saints, where their two worlds are 
united and blended into one exultant company, feast- 
ing with Christ on the supreme delights which God 
can, in His goodness and power, minister to the 
deified spirits of angels and men. and. through the 
enraptured spirit, minister to the glorified senses of 
the body. 

"We know that God is not a material light, no 
matter how dazzling or how subtile. We know that 
He is a personal being — nay, that within His in- 
finitely rich nature Three divine Persons live and 
reign in one undivided Essence. We know that 
they form a most blissful society; and that the life 
and bliss of both angels and men in heaven consist 
in seeing clearly and knowing perfectly these Three 
Co-equal and Infinite Persons in Their e-senee and 



KOVISSIMA. 293 

nature; in loving them, and being loved by them; 
in being admitted — really admitted — to share in that 
life, in Their society, fully, securely, everlastingly. 

COMING TO THE TABLE OF THE LAMB. 

Human thought can conceive nothing higher than 
this ; the human heart can aspire to nothing higher. 
Nor can the imagination picture to itself here below 
anything more sublime or more ravishing than this 
union of man and angel in one glorious, immortal 
society with this divine Trinity. 

Indeed, intellect and imagination, while we are 
yet in the flesh, can only perceive these truths dimly, 
unsatisfactorily. They arc revealed truths, however. 

So, imagine now the inhabitants of the angelic and 
the human worlds united in one society — let us say 
it in the noblest, the divinest sense — in one social 
gathering, around that Triune God, these Three 
Infinite Persons filling up from the abysmal bosom 
of their own life the cup out of which every soul 
there drinks, only to be intoxicated with a delight 
so divine that the draught never satiates. 

When He who from all eternity is the very centre 
of that Triune society — the Son, the infinite Object 
of the Father's and the Spirit's love — took our flesh, 
walked among men, and tried to lift up their minds 
to some dim apprehension of the life eternal, it was 
as if one endeavored to hold discourse with persons 
just awaking from a lethargy which held body and 
soul. 

"Amen, amen, I say unto you : He that belie veth 
in Me hath everlasting life. 

" i~ am the Bread of Life. 

"Your fathers did eat manna in the desert, and 
arc dead. 



294 tfOVISSIMA. 

"This [i. &., Himself, the Bread of Life.] is the 
Bread which cometh dcm n from heaven ; that if any 
man eat of it, he may not die. 

"I am the Living Bread which came down from 
heaven." * 

AVe have already spoken, in a preceding chapter, 
of the Sacrament and Sacrifice instituted by Him, 
on the eve of His Passion, in memory of His death. 
It was his farewell Sapper; and the Bread broken 
there, and the dread Reality partaken of in that 
Supper, and left to be partaken of as a divine per- 
petual ordinance till the end of time, surely is a 
reminder as well of this Supper of the Lamb, de- 
scribed by St. John. 

Read and ponder this passage : 

"And whilst they were at supper. Jesus took 
bread, and blessed, and broke, and gave it to His 
Disciples, and said : ' Take ye, and eat : Thi> is 
My body.' 

"And taking the chalice He gave thanks: and 
gave it to them, saying : ' Drink ye all of this. For 
this is My Blood of the New Testament; which shall 
be shed for many unto remission of sins. 

" 'And I say to you, I will not drink from hence- 
forth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I 
shall drink it with you new in the kingdom of My 
Father.'" f 

DEIXKIXG THE NEW WLVE. 

V 

The day here announced has now come ; and we 
see Him and them at table in the kingdom of the 

Father. 

* St. Jolm, vi, 17-51. Matthew, xxvi, 25-29. 



STOVISSIMA. 295 

What is "this fruit of the vine" which He 
promises to drink with them "new" in the everlast- 
ing kingdom? The fruit of the vine in the chalice 
out of which He has bid them all to drink in the 
Last Supper is, He says, "My own Blood of the 
New Testament." Both the Bread and the Wine, 
in that Banquet, contained a divine Reality, and this 
was the pledge of the eternal and perfect possession. 
Possession of what? Of that which alone can 
satisfy the aspirations of man or angel — the Supreme 
Good, the Infinite God Himself. 

Christ revealed to the world the existence in the 
Deity of the Three distinct and Co-equal Persons. 
He spoke of His Father continually; of Himself as' 
one with the Father; and of the Holy Spirit. In 
the kingdom to which, after death, He was return- 
ing, "the house of His Father, there are many 
mansions." There is room for all God's faithful 
servants. 

As Man, with a perfect soul and a perfect body, 
what was the divine life of Jesus Christ's humanity? 
The Beatific Vision, first, due to Him from the 
union of that humanity with the Person of the Son, 
and the additional felicity and glory due to Him as 
Man-God. 

The intoxicating draughts from that Beatific 
Vision, and the divine love it begets, was the Wine 
which both He as Man, the Head of regenerated 
humanity, and they, His members and brethren, were 
to drink in the kingdom of the Father. In Him 
and through Him we possess the Supreme Good, see 
God face to face, and drink from His very bosom 
the life eternal. And, precisely because this clear 
sight of the divine Essence, this possession of God, 



296 xovissma. 

this union with the Three divine Persons, makes us 
sharers of God's own nature and life, Christ, in the 
farewell discourse at the Last Supper, likens Him- 
self to the vine, the Disciples and all His elect to 
the branches. It is the same vital currents which 
flow through the stem of the vine and every branch 
and spray. In heaven, the bliss, the glory, the 
ecstatic life, produced by seeing and possessing God, 
flows from the Man-Christ, the Head of the Church 
Triumphant, of all humankind congregated there, 
through the entire body. This divine life, this par- 
taking of the divine nature, is the drinking the fruit 
of the vine in the kingdom of the Father. 

Ah, what banquet can be compared with that? 
What can equal in delight the breaking and eating 
of that Bread of Life? What wine ever tasted by 
man here below can equal the savor and intoxicating 
sweetness of "the fruit of that Vine" partaken of 
in that kingdom where man is lifted up to an 
equality with the angels, and where angels and men 
live, in a manner, on the very substance of the Deity ? 

CALIX MEUS IXEBEIAXS QTJAM PE.ECLAEUS EST! 

Can we understand what a cup that is out of 
which all drink there? Even God Himself does 
not, cannot, exhaust the infinite sources of His own 
felicity: how could man or angel drain to the bottom 
the cup of bliss there held to their lips ? As well 
might an infant try to pour the ocean with its hand 
into the hollow that tiny hand has dug in the sands. 

And in that Banquet the deep joy and bliss of 
each are, if possible, increased by seeing the happi- 
ness and glory of all. In those sweet circles com- 
posed, amid that blessed company, by those whom 



NOVISSIMA. 297 

we loved best and benefited most on earth — in those 
living crowns of sainted human beings who surround 
those who were their true parents and guides — is 
realized in the highest degree the joy which we 
behold on earth in family celebrations, where the 
parents are true servants of God, and the children 
are the image of their parents. It is hard to say 
who is happiest, the father and mother while 
dispensing love with abundance, or the children 
whose souls and faces reflect back on mother and 
father the divine radiance of gratitude, reverence, 
and deepest love, together with the light of their 
own joy. 

So in the kingdom of heaven. But this is only 
one little item — feebly, feebly expressed — in the 
immense whole of the felicity which floods there, 
around the very Well-Spring of Life and Felicity 
Eternal — the myriads of the two worlds seated at 
the Supper of the Lamb. 

THE NEWNESS OF THAT CUP. 

We cannot dwell longer on this spectacle. 

We now ask, Why did Christ say that He would 
drink with them the fruit of the Tine new in the 
kingdom of His Father? In what consists this 
newness? 

It is new, because not till the resurrection day did 
the bodily organism of God's elect have any share in 
the divine life enjoyed in heaven by the holy souls 
admitted to its felicity between the Ascension and 
the Last Day. Once risen from their graves, and re- 
united to their glorified souls, the currents of divine 
life — the intoxicating wine of the Beatific Vision 
and the Godlike energies imparted by our consequent 



$98 KOVISSIMA. 

participation in the divine nature — flowed through 
the veins of these transformed bodies. What a 
thought of new life, new strength, new joy, was that 
of these myriads of God's own children, when they 
arose, thus transfigured, and looked upon the very 
face of Christ and His Blessed Mother — the Parents 
of that new life — and then could look upon the 
radiant countenances of all that immense society of 
the blessed, now marshaled to the right hand of the 
judgment seat! What bliss ineffable, what gratitude 
to the Giver of all good, overflowed their whole 
being as they behold around and near them those 
who on earth were dearest, who had helped them 
most to serve God, and whom they had helped to the 
knowledge and practice of all godliness. 

Can we not conceive somewhat of the new trans- 
ports of that hour? 

And then with bodily eyes — these same weak eyes 
which are now dazzled by the splendor of the sun or 
the brilliancy of artificial light — to see God clearly 
face to face, to see and know every individual in the 
angelic world, to look upon the sacred humanity of 
our Lord, to perceive without veil or hindrance the 
depths of that great soul that only lived for us, that 
bore the agony in the Garden, and the agony in 
Jerusalem, and the desolation upon the cross ; to see 
clearly how the Person of the Son is physically 
united to the humanity; and all this, at a glance, in 
which is concentrated the knowledge and delight of 
an eternity! Do you now understand holy Job's 
sustaining hope, while the most loathsome leprosy 
made his body as horrible to the sense as a corpse in 
putrefaction: "I know that my Redeemer liveth, 
and in the last day I shall rise out of the earth. 



NOVISSIMA. 299 

And I shall be clothed again with my skin, and my 
eyes shall behold, and not another. This, my hope, 
is laid up in my bosom. " * 

It is now the hope of every one of us, who believe, 
that "our Redeemer liveth," and that "in the last 
day we shall rise out of the earth,' 7 and that our 
bodily eyes shall behold Him. Oh! the beginning 
of that new life, when the same divine virtue which 
brought forth Christ's own body immortal from the 
sepulchre, shall course through our veins and 
arteries, and every fibre of our being, like the sap 
of the Vine, diffusing vital vigor through all Its 
branches ! 

INTOXICATED BY THE JOY OF THEIR NEW POS- 
SESSION. 

Another draught of this new Wine will add to the 
divine intoxication of the blessed multitudes, when 
they behold, opening out its immensities to receive 
them in that heavenly universe, the masterpiece of 
the love and power of the Father, and when their 
feet tread its soil, taking possession of it as their 
own — aye, their very own, in its height and depth, 

* Job, xix, 25-27. [The Latin Vulgate version of the Book of Job is due 
to St. Jerome, who had to guide him not only the very best Hebrew and 
Syriac texts then extant, but also the best Greek, texts of the Septuagint. 
It is certain that the Hebrew manuscripts from which St. Jerome trans- 
lated have all utterly perished. The present Hebrew Masoretic Bible 
dates from the ninth century; and, according to some scholars, one 
great purpose of its authors (the Masoretes, "holders of traditions,") 
was to doctor the text in such a way as to take from the Christians all 
Scriptural grounds for proving Christ to be the Messiah. From the 
very first century, seeing that the Christians quoted— as, indeed, 
Christ and His Apostles had quoted— the Septuagint Old Testament, 
the Jews, who until then had held this version to be authentic, and 
even inspired, now disavowed it, and impugned its authenticity. 
But, as it had been most solemnly accepted by the Synagogue and 
the nation as authentic, scholars cannot give it up to please Jewish 
prejudice or spite. The sense of the text, as quoted above, was that 
of the Septuagint and of the "ancient" Hebrew texts in Jerome's 
possession. Modern Jews and recent Protestant translators into 
English cannot shake our faith in the Latin Vulgate.] 



300 NOVISSIMA. 

its length and breadth, throughout all its glorious 
spheres — all their own, with its magnificence and its 
treasures, together with Him who made it ! 

Oh, that land of the living, that Sion above the 
skies, that imperishable Jerusalem, that City of our 
God, so dear to us under so many sweet names, 
sung of under so many lovely images of home and 
country, during the exile of our race here below — 
Avhat joy there will be when the everlasting Reality 
lies before us in all its grandeur and glory ! 

It shall bud forth and blossom, and shall rejoice 
with joy and praise. The glory of Libanus is given 
to it — the beauty of Carmel and Sharon : they shall 
see the glory of the Lord, and the beauty of our God. 

"Say to the faint-hearted: 'Take courage and 
fear not ! Behold your God will bring the revenge 
of recompense. God Himself will come and will 
save you. Then shall the eyes of the blind be 
opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. 
Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the 

tongue of the dumb shall be free And a 

path and a way shall be there : and it shall be called 
the holy way. The unclean shall not pass over 

it No lion shall be there, nor shall 

any mischievous beast go up by it, nor be found 
there: but they shall walk there that shall be de- 
livered. And the redeemed of the Lord shall return, 
and shall come into Sion with praise : and everlasting 
joy shall be upon their heads. They shall obtain 
joy and gladness; and sorrow and mourning shall 
flee away." * 

It will be new for Them — the Father of our souls, 
Christ Jesus, and for the Mother who gave Him to 

* Isaias, xxxv, 4-10. 



NOVISSIMA. 301 

us on the cross, the Fruit of Life for the healing of 
the nations — to see the children redeemed by Their 
sufferings, Their labors, Their tears, and Their blood, 
thus reunited in the land of the living, in body as 
well as in soul — God's blessed family for evermore ! 
It will be new for Him, the Father of our Lord 
and Saviour, Christ, to welcome to His kingdom, to 
seat around His table, the elect of the race, now 
made perfect in nature and grace, made His friends, 
and His children, admitted to the most secret in- 
timacy of His interior life, associated with Him in 
His councils, made one with Him and with each 
other in that incomprehensible charity which is the 
soul of God's own life. 

THAT DAY! THAT DAY! 

Oh, on that day, when our humanity, arrived at 
this crowning stage in its upward progress, is thus 
for the first time seated — really seated— at that 
heavenly Banquet, Avhat a new tide of divinest bliss 
and divinest joy will that Father of mercies and 
God of all consolation pour forth on the united 
worlds of men and angels ! 

"The rush of the river maketh the city of God 
joyful: the Most High hath sanctified His taber- 
nacle. God is in the midst thereof, it shall not be 
moved : God will help us in the morning early." * 

Aye, He "will help us in the morning early," at 
the dawn of the new day of eternity for the heavenly 
worlds, to bear the rush of this infinite tide of new- 
born felicity, to understand what a destiny and what 
glory is ours. For none save God Himself can 

*Psalm XLV, 5: Fluminus impetus leetiflcat Civitatem Dei; sanctifl- 
cavit tabernaculum suum Altissimus. Deus in medio ejus, no commo- 
vebitur ; adjuvabit earn Deus mane diluculo. 



302 NOVISSIMA- 

measure the height and depth, the length and 
breadth, of that glory. 

He must also help us to bear the intensity of the 
joy which, like the mighty electric currents of the 
lightning, or even of artificial creation, destroy life 
wherever their flow is impeded. Sudden joy, as we 
know by experience, kills as surely as the rush of a 
great and sudden sorrow. Our human hearts can 
only endure the measured pulsations of a moderate 
emotion. Too rapid a vital action breaks them. 



CHAPTER XX 



HOW TO FIND HEAVEN ON EARTH. 



Thou hast led me by Thy right hand : 

By Thy will Thou hast conducted me, 

And with Thy glory Thou hast received me. 

For what have I in heaven? 

And besides Thee what do I desire upon earth? 

[For Thee] my flesh and my heart hath fainted away: 

Thou art the God of my heart, 

And the God that is my portion forever. 

—Psalm LXXII, 24-26. 

HEAVEN THE EXD OF ALL THINGS. 

We scarcely paused to behold Christ, our King, 
enthroned on high at His royal Feast, while in and 
around Him shine forth all the splendors of the 
Deity. Our poor mortal eyes were dazzled, and our 
imagination wearied and terrified by the efforts to 
behold the heavenly universe, from the centre, at 
Christ's throne, to every point of its circumference, 



XOVISSIMA. 303 

filled with His guests. For throughout that most 
glorious creation there are no vacant orbs, no 
desert places. At either pole of this immeasurable 
sphere, with the starry clusters revolving within its 
periphery, there is no frozen ocean, no ice, no cold; 
nor, in its central regions, is there tropical heat, or 
desert spaces, or rank vegetation. All is attempered 
to the loving will of the Creator, and fitted for the 
felicity and enjoyment of His beloved servants and 
children. 

Such, physically and morally, is the heavenly 
Jerusalem, the Church of Christ in her eternal 
repose and perfection, the society of the city of God. 

The altar of the Lamb, on which St. John beheld 
Him, as ever slain in sacrifice, is now replaced by 
His throne at the Feast. There are no longer, in 
exile and mortal struggle upon earth, any of the 
children of Adam and Eve, for whom Christ's Blood 
need flow in intercession or in expiation. The 
ladder which the Patriarch beheld, reaching from 
heaven to earth — that luminous pathway along which 
angels ascended and descended in their ministrations 
to mankind — is now withdrawn. 

All is repose, enjoyment, perpetual praise, adora- 
tion, and exultation throughout every province of 
that celestial empire. The eternal bridals, the indis- 
soluble union of the Lamb with His spouse, is now 
consummated; and "God is all in all." 

Yes, God is " all in all." * 

Shall I, His anointed priest, after guiding you to 
the gates of His heavenly city, and endeavoring to 
set before you, though never so dimly, so confusedly, 
the mighty Reality, not tarry with you awhile along 
the earthly road, and teach you, and myself with you, 

*l Cor., xv, 28. 



304 irovissiiiA. 

how to keep that God of our hearts — our Portion in 
the everlasting years — constantly and sweetly present 
to the eyes of our soul while our pilgrimage lasts? 

THE PEESEXCE OF GOD. 

Let me endeavor to teach you what divine Love 
does, even in this life, for the children of men, in 
order to prepare mind, and heart, and life for the 
eternal reward. 

In a thousand ways, and at every moment of our 
lives, and in every place, attentive reflection will 
convince us that God is all in all. Oh ! let the light 
of this truth penetrate gently, sweetly, through every 
avenue of our spirit, and what a powerful aid we 
shall find in it towards noble thoughts, high aims, 
heroic deeds, a Godlike, Christ-like life! 

I. — It is a truth of reason — one which, stated to an 
intelligent child or an unlettered peasant, will be 
accepted by either — that God, being a Spirit, and One 
to whose substance no place, no other substance can 
oppose limits or obstacles, must be present in all 
places and all things. It is one of the first truths 
inculcated in the catechism. 

Theologians and philosophers explain this presence 
of God in all places and things, by considering how 
many ways a person may be present; we have only 
to consider the most obvious truths. God is present 
everywhere by His essence and substantial being. 
Hear what He says of Himself in the Prophecy of 
Jeremias : 

" i Am I, think ye, a God at hand/ saith the Lord, 
'and not a God afar off? Shall a man be hid in 
secret places, and I not see him/ saith the Lord? 
f Do not I fill heaven and earth/ saith the Lord?" * 

* Jeremias, xxiii, 23-24. 



tfOVISSIMA. " 305 

In another inspired book it is said : 

" Think of the Lord in goodness, and seek Him 
in simplicity of heart. For He is found by them 
that tempt Him not: and He showeth Himself to 

them that have faith in Him The 

Holy Spirit of Discipline will flee from the de- 
ceitful; .... He shall not abide when 

iniquity comes in For the Spirit of 

the Lord hath filled the whole earth; and that which 
containeth all things hath knowledge of the voice/' * 

Both of these passages help us toward under- 
standing the distinctions made in Scripture and 
explained by theologians. It is evident that God, 
being in every way infinite, is everywhere present, 
by His very essence, and present with all His graces 
and gifts. He is present also by His power, because 
He created all things, keeps them in being, and 
governs them all to His own purposes. He is also 
present by His watchfulness; for His eye, whieli 
never sleeps, sees everything, pierces through and 
through everything, reading the thoughts, aims, sen- 
timents, affections, of all spirits and all hearts. 

Such is the teaching of Ecclesiasticus, speaking of 
the lustful sinner : 

" Darkness compasseth me about, and the walls 
cover me, and no man seeth me : whom do I fear ? 
The Most High will not remember my sins. 

"And he understandeth not that His eye seeth 
all things, for such a man's heart driveth from Him 
the fear of God. . . . . And he knoweth not 
that the eyes of the Lord are far brighter than the 
sun, beholding round about all the ways of men, and 
the bottom of the deep, and looking into the hearts 

* Wisdom, i, 1«7* 



306 • NOVISSIMA. 

of men, into the most hidden parts. For all things 
were known to the Lord God before they were 
created: so also after they were perfected He be- 
holdeth all things." * 

SUBSTANTIALLY PRESENT IN ALL THINGS AND 
PLACES. 

Therefore, if we believe in God, in His infinitude, 
immensity, and omnipresence, we must simply be- 
lieve that He is substantially present in all things — 
their Creator, Preserver, Governor. In the heavens 
above me, on the earth around me, in the abysses of 
ocean, as well as in the interior of our globe, there 
is not a thing, nor a place, in which that infinitely 
rich, beautiful, wise, all-knowing, and all-powerful 
Spirit I call God looks not out upon me, looks not 
into my very being. If I love Him, I can meet 
Him everywhere, see Him in everything; for in all, 
His wisdom, love, power, watchfulness, and care of 
me can be manifest to the eye of my soul. 

If I love Him, and love to seek Him, it is easy 
for the eyes of my soul to pierce the veil which, in 
all created things, hides His presence from me, easy 
for the hand of my faith to touch and hold Him. 

Oh! the veil which covers Him is much thinner 
than we fancy, if we only knew it! 

More than that. We need not go abroad, outside 
of the house of our own soul, to find Him, hear 
Him, converse with Him. 

GOD PRESENT IN THE HUMAN SOUL. 

For it is a truth of revelation, as well as one of 
reason, that God dwells in man as in His dearest, 
noblest temple. No abode, among all created things, 

* Ecclesiasticus, xxiii, 20-29 



NOVISSIMA. 307 

can be more sacred to that divine Majesty, to that 
uncreated Spirit, "who loveth souls," than the inmost 
sanctuary of our spirit, where we can make a throne 
for Him, and keep the lamp of the holiest love ever 
burning in His presence. 

When, therefore, we walk abroad we can find in 
everything that we see the work of His hands; His 
footprints are on the mountain, in the plain, on the 
seashore, and the mighty deep. Everywhere He is 
very near to us, if we will only believe it; every- 
where we can walk in His presence, and everywhere 
feel that the eye of the Father, Benefactor, and 
Judge follows us sleeplessly, unweariedly. The 
light of that veiled countenance, the watchfulness of 
that awful Eye, should be a strength and a comfort 
unspeakable to us in trouble and temptation. It 
should be a terror to the evil-doer. 

There is another Presence very sweet and very 
dear to the Catholic heart, in which the Incarnate 
Wisdom and Love found means to be in a special 
manner our Emmanuel. 

THE EUCHAEISTIC PKESEXCE. 

The belief in that Presence covered ancient Chris- 
tendom with shrines more beautiful in all the 
creations of art than ever was the Temple of Solo- 
mon. It is now, like a plant transferred to the soil 
of the New World, multiplying its offshoots every- 
where, and blossoming forth into flowers of beauty. 
But the Presence is as dear to our hearts in the log- 
chapel of the Canadian woods, as it is in the marble 
cathedral of New York city. Blessed are those who 
love His tabernacles; the spell which draws them 
and holds them there is a mark of predestination. 



308 XOVISSBIA. 

II. — So Infinite Love speaks to willing ears from 
every part of earth and sky. But it is not satisfied 
with the mere passive presence. It also works for 
ns in every one of those countless forces, energies, 
activities, that fill the physical, the intellectual, the 
social, and religious world. 

HOW GOD WORKS IX ALL THINGS FOR US. 

This truth opens out a marvelous field of study 
for every serious-minded person who has once per- 
ceived its significance — an exhaustless source of 
sweetest enjoyment to a heart set upon divine things. 

St. Paul, writing' to the Church of Corinth, utters 
these golden words : "All things are yours, whether 
it be Paul, or Apollo, or Cephas, or the world, or 
life, or death, or things present, or things to come : 
for all are yours. And you are Christ's : and Christ 
is God's." * And, writing to the faithful in Rome, 
he says : " We know that to them that love God, all 
things work together unto good, to such as according 
to His purpose are called to be Saints." f Do not, 
as these words meet your eye, allow the fearful 
phantom of the doctrine of predestination to rise up 
from this page, and cause you to close the book. 
Pedestination, as explained by her who is the tender 
mother of the children of God, and the unerring 
expounder of His revealed truth, is not the frightful 
thing which self-sufficient and self-guiding pride hath 
made it. St. Paul is teaching the Romans the beau- 
tiful scheme of God's supernatural and natural 
providence over all those who are baptized, and are 
heartily working to save themselves in accordance 
with their professed faith in Christ and the light of 
the Holy Spirit within them. 

*1 Cor., iii, 22-23. t Romans, viii, 28. 



NOVISSIMA. 309 

Surely, it is not for those who are turning their 
backs on the light, and walking persistently in the 
ways of evil, that we are to claim the manifold 
blessedness promised by Christ here and hereafter to 
His faithful followers. 

Listen, then, to what St. Paul says of God's 
wonderful way of making all things on earth and in 
heaven work to secure the eternal felicity of those 
"who love Him" and who seek to do His will sin- 
cerely. We, who have been amid the splendors of 
heaven, who have been reading in the light of 
Calvary and the judgment seat the mystery of the 
divine Justice and Mercy, must have no difficulty in 
understanding every line of the following passage: 

"I reckon that the sufferings of this time are not 
worthy to be compared with the glory to come. 
. . . For the expectation of the creature [i. e., all 
creation,] waiteth for the revelation of the sons of 
God. . . . Even we ourselves groan within 
ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of 
God, the redemption of our body. . . . Like- 
wise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we 
know not what we should pray for as we ought: 
but the Spirit Himself asketh for us with unspeakable 
groanings. . . . What then shall we say to these 
things? If God be for us, who is against us? He 
that spared not even His own Son, but delivered 
Him up for us all, how hath He not also, with Him, 
given us all things ? " * 

A WONDERFUL DISPLAY OF GOD'S LOVING CARE. 

Now consider the following points : 
1. That, whereas all things are destined to be 
ours in the life to come — God, and all that He is 

* Romans, viii, 18-32. 



310 SFOYISSniA. 

and all that He has ; so now all creation, with all its 
elemental and vital forces, are so controlled and 
directed by the Creator that they shall co-operate 
with us in saving our souls, and that nothing, abso- 
lutely nothing, can or shall prevent our fulfilling 
God's design over us but our own willful neglect or 
abuse of His graces. 

In the case of every one of us who reads this 
page, the truth, in so far as our soul is concerned, 
is this : 

We know we are called to the service of God 
here, and to His eternal possession hereafter. In 
that service our poor weak will, to prevent it from 
making an ill-use of its innate and inalienable free- 
dom, has ever before its eyes the terrors of an 
eternity of punishment as the award due to the 
willful abandonment of God's service — the con- 
temning, in practice, the eternal inheritance of glory 
awaiting the faithful Christian, the contemning, as 
well, of Christ's death and redemption, the con- 
temning of the unspeakable love of Father and Son 
as manifested in that work of redemption, and the 
spurning of the mighty helps toward fidelity, gen- 
erosity, and self-sanctification supplied by Christ's 
ordinances, by God's ever-present and fatherly provi- 
dence. 

MAX INEXCUSABLE FOR XOT SERVING GOD. 

Where human infirmity in a Christian man or 
woman is so divinely upheld, aided, set forward, 
and changed into Godlike strength by the use of 
graces which are given with a liberality proportioned 
to the good use made of them, and given with a 
liberality increasing ever as we lean more firmly on 
the Hand that gives, and walk more rapidly in the 



NOVISSIMA. 311 

royal road of Christ's examples — what excuse can 
there be for losing one's soul? 

Looking at what is highest, divinest, first, in this 
grand providential scheme for changing man's in- 
firmity into Christ-like virtue and strength, we see 
that God places Himself, in a manner, at man's 
disposal in this struggle to attain to life eternal. 

Not only are we assured that nothing, absolutely 
nothing — no power, no combination of circumstances 
we can think of — can prevent us from maintaining 
our union of mind and heart with God in this life, 
or from reaching in the other the sublime reward 
promised to fidelity; but all the Three divine 
Persons, all the influence of angels and Saints in 
heaven, all the action and ministrations of the 
Church on earth, are so ordained, so directed, as to 
help us positively, powerfully, continually, in serving 
God, sanctifying ourselves, and securing our salvation. 

This statement is of indisputable certainty in every 
particular. 

Still, when we consider this stupendous truth, and 
look into our own lives and consciences, we are 
appalled by. our own lukewarmness, by our backward- 
ness, by our utter lack of generosity, in corresponding 
with that infinite and ever-present Love, whose 
entire providence is planned to help us to rise and 
to lift up others with us to the divine height of good- 
ness required by our quality of adopted children and 
servants of the Most High God, and of co-heirs 
with Christ to that everlasting kingdom we have 
been describing. 

THE MYSTERY OF FREE-WTLL. 

Here is the deep, deep mystery of free-will; the 
mystery that God should leave us free to serve Him 



312 NOVISSIMA. 

or not to serve Him; to make ourselves worthy of 
heaven, or to deserve hell by our refusal to comply 
with His will. Here we can meditate the mystery 
of man's weakness and perversity, in rejecting such 
a destiny, in neglecting such mighty helps toward its 
attainment. And here, too, shines forth the Godlike 
strength of the men and women who, enlightened by 
the knowledge of God's unspeakable goodness and 
greatness, filled with an insatiable ardor to win the 
glorious prize awaiting them in eternity, and inflamed 
with a holy zeal for the salvation of their brethren's 
souls, as well as their own, set forth on the road of 
God's service like giants running a race, and ap- 
pear among men as if the Spirit of Christ lifted 
them up and carried them forward. 

HOW ST. FRANCIS XAVIER CO-OPERATED WITH GOD's 
DESIGNS. 

Once Francis Xavier had firmly grasped the fact 
of the divine reality of the life to come, and clearly 
perceived all the means provided to enable him 
to attain its possession, his whole soul was fired 
with the love of the Saviour who had won for us so 
glorious a kingdom, with the desire to make His 
name known to the ends of the earth, with a con- 
suming zeal to save from eternal separation from 
Christ the untold millions of the new worlds re- 
cently rediscovered by Yasco de Gama and Chris- 
topher Columbus. 

See him leaving Rome, at the bidding of the Pope, 
traveling on foot all the way to Lisbon, passing, as 
if borne, like Isaias of old, in a chariot of living 
flame, along the western and southern coasts of 
India, along those of Java, Sumatra, the "West 



NOVISSIMA. 313 

Indian Archipelago to Japan, and from Japan back 
again to Hindostan. Of course, wherever that holy 
man passed, like a celestial vision of goodness, 
gentleness, and saving power, the pagan multitudes 
were drawn to him, and through him to Christ. 
Compelled to return to Europe, he contemplated 
doing so by the way of China and the entire Asiatic 
Continent, converting on his way the peoples of 
these vast countries. 

He only saw the good to be done, and put himself 
in God's hand as an instrument for doing it. And 
what cannot, will not, God do with man as His in- 
strument, if man will only be in that Hand a willing, 
docile instrument, perfectly united to the almighty 
Energy which wields it? 

The prodigies effected by Xavier's apostolic zeal 
during the few years he labored in the East would 
have been eclipsed by those which he purposed 
accomplishing in China, were it not that he suc- 
cumbed within sight of its shores — the bodily frame 
exhausted by its gigantic labors, and consumed by 
the seraphic fire which burned within. 

IN THE HAND OF GOD. 

In one of his journeys by sea, the vessel which 
bore him was submerged by a cyclone, and evidently 
saved by a miracle. Xavier, in a letter, describes 
his own sensations as the waves closed over the 
ship. He was calm and in sweet communion with 
God. "He was but an instrument and in His hand, 
and whether on sea or land he only wished to be in 
that almighty Hand." 

Those who have read his letters and his life know 
how uninterrupted was his communion with God, in 



314 utovissima. 

spite of the devouring activity, which filled almost 
every hour of the night as well as the day. He 
seemed to be not a mortal man. but one of those 
angelic messengers invisibly busied on earth with 
merciful ministrations towards mankind, and who, in 
all places and in every occupation, never cease gazing 
on the face of God. 

Thus, without wishing it, have we been led to 
state the practical purpose of these remarks — to 
work with God with our whole heart and soul in 
sanctifying our own life, and then to devote our 
whole energy to His service. Yes, we should so 
purify mind and heart — our aims, sentiments, ac- 
tions, and entire life — if we would serve Him well. 
Let love of Him, and zeal for His glory, and the 
salvation of our brethren, detach us from setf } if we 
would serve Him aright and do the work He has for 
us to do. We cannot be selfish and be God's efficient 
and helpful workmen. 

A DEEPER COXSIDEEATEOX OF THESE TEETHS. 

But to incite us to become thus worthy of serving 
the God of our souls, we have to think over and 
weigh well the fact, that in every living thing around 
us, in our homes and outside of them, there is not 
one which, in some way or other, does not work for 
our good. 

HEAVEX HELPING EAETH TO SERVE GOD. 

When, at the beginning of this chapter, we spoke 
of heaven as it will be after the last day, and the 
closing of the present era of trial, and said that the 
ladder beheld by the Patriarch in his vision, reaching 
from earth to heaven, would be withdrawn, we did 



hovissima. 315 

not need to remind the reader that the ladder is still 
in existence. There is a road of light and love 
between God's family here below and the everlasting 
gates of our heavenly home, along which His angels 
are ever ascending with the petitions and thanks- 
givings of His children, and descending with His 
gifts and graces — along which, too, the spirits of the 
just mount to receive their reward, and come down, 
when He so permits it, to fulfill some errand of love 
and mercy toward their dear ones here below. 

If the veil of mortality were withdrawn from our 
eyes for a single hour, what a sublime and consoling 
spectacle would be disclosed of the perpetual inter- 
course between the Church on earth and the Church 
of heaven! 

At any rate, let every one of our readers believe 
that for every soul working earnestly, with God's 
grace, to secure its own sanctification and salvation, 
the entire city of God on high is perpetually making 
intercession. The entire course of His natural and 
supernatural providence conspires to help us in 
this work. Do we live and act as if we believed 
this? 

WORK LIKE A TRUE CHILD OF GOD. 

Then think of the folly and wickedness of becom- 
ing dismayed or discouraged by the obstacles created 
by our own weakness or inconstancy of purpose, or 
by temptations from without and the terrible influ- 
ence of evil or worldly example. We should recall 
the memorable words of one * who, nnbaptized and 
carried away by the tide of the surrounding pagan 
corruption, had long weakly believed virtue to be a 

* St. Augustine. 



316 uroYissniA. 

thing impossible : '• Behold, if I only will it, I even 
now become a child of God! " 

Then read over attentively these words of another 
great convert: "What shall we then say to these 
things? If God be for us. who is against us? He 
that spared not even His own Son, but delivered 
Him up for us all. how hath He not also, with Him, 
given us all things ? " : 

To enforce his appeal to our generosity in co-oper- 
ating with God aud His Son in the work of our 
sanetifieation. St. Paul reminds us that, at our last 
dread account, no one bnt God. the Author of our 
being and the Giver of all gifts, natural and super- 
natural, has the right to stand as our accuser. 
"Who shall accuse against the elect of God? God 
that justineth.'" f 

Aye. He alone, our Father, who. at this very 
moment, places Himself and all creation at our dis- 
posal, if we will only consent to do <:>ur part and 
work with Him. 

And who is to lie out Judge when the day of 
accounting has arrived? "Who is He that shall 
condemn? Christ Jesus that died, yea that is risen 
also again, who is at the right hand of God, who 
also maketh intercession for us." I 

While the Father directs the whole order of heaven 
and earth so as to help us to attain to our glorious 
destiny and gain our inheritance. He, the Son. who 
died to give us a right to it, is here represented as 
sitting at the Father's right hand, perpetually plead- 
ing for us, making His Blood and His wounds speak 
in our favor. 

i Eomans, viii, 31-38. + Ibidem, xiii, 34, 

t Ibidem, Tiii, 33. 



HOVISSIMA. 317 

"."Who, then/' Paul asks the Romans under Nero, 
"shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall 
tribulation? or distress? or famine? or nakedness? 
or danger? or persecution? or the sword?" 

The persecutor even then was busy at work ; and 
the day was not far distant when Nero's sword would 
strike the Apostle himself, and the fires which lighted 
the streets and squares of Rome by night would 
each consume a Christian martyr. 

Still the prospect will not deter Paul from hasten- 
ing to Rome, or from thus infusing his own heroic 
spirit into the faithful of that city : 

" But in all these things we overcome [i. e., gain 
the victory,] because of Him that hath loved us. 
For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, 
nor principalities, nor powers, nor" things present, 
nor things to come, nor might, nor height, nor depth, 
nor any other creature shall be able to separate us 
from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our 
Lord." * 

This glorious spirit of generosity — giving back to 
God deeds for deeds, life for life, love for love — has 
never . died out of the world. The words of the 
Psalmist, which St. Paul here applies to the Chris- 
tians of his day — the first offerings to God of 
Christendom at its birth — are literally true as ap- 
plied to our own times: "For Thy sake we are put 
to death all the clay long. We are accounted as 
sheep for the slaughter." 

The privilege of dying for Christ, however, is 
only that of the very, very few ; that of living and 
laboring for Him and His cause is the scarcely less 
enviable lot of very many, as it ought, indeed, to be 

* Romans, viii, 37-39. 



318 KOVISSIMA. 

the ambition of all Christians. If we would only 
remember the prize! 

THE DIVINEST AMBITION. 

And, truly, apart from the mere motive of grati- 
tude and love to our divine Benefactor, apart even 
from the generosity which should prompt to noble 
aims and nobler deeds the adopted sons of the living 
God — the co-heirs with Christ to His kingdom — the 
very ambition of winning and securing that kingdom 
itself should be a motive force more than sufficient 
to lift us above the seeking of worldly pleasures, 
of temporal fame and honors, of a perishable wealth — 
only useful as a means to serve God and help our 
brethren — and to fire our souls with sentiments and 
passions becoming such as aspire to eternal glory 
and bliss. 

St. Paul, when he wrote from Corinth his Epistle 
to the Romans, had in view, among other things, to 
sustain the Jewish Christians who were there sub- 
jected to bitter persecution. They were truly like 
men who went continually about with their lives in 
their hands. Every day beheld, throughout the 
Eoman empire, numbers added by persecution to the 
army of martyrs. Christians were like sheep on 
their way to the slaughter-house. But they braved 
danger, distress, torments, and death for the sake of 
Christ. 

When, later, he fell himself into the hands of 
Nero, and was in hourly expectation of his death 
sentence, how aptly and irresistibly he could, from 
his prison, appeal to the Corinthians in these 
eloquent words : 

"All things are for your sakes. ».-... For 
Which cause we faint not: but though the outward 



NOVISSIMA. 319 

man decays [giving way to old age, exhaustion, tor- 
ture, and imprisonment,] yet the inward man is 
renewed day by day. For that which is at present 
momentary and light of our tribulation, worketh for 
us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of 
glory." 

WHAT MEN DARE, AND DO, AND SUFFER TO GAIN 
THIS WORLD'S GOODS. 

In our country men are more than eager to make 
a great fortune in a short time. For this purpose 
they dare everything, undergo everything. The 
mining regions of the Rocky Mountains, of Cali- 
fornia, and now the frozen wilds of distant Alaska, 
could tell incredible tales of hardship heroically 
borne, and often borne in vain, to secure the golden 
prize apparently within the grasp of the toilers. 
Of the many on whom fortune shed its golden 
showers, how few, comparatively, have retained pos- 
session of permanent wealth ! What numbers have 
remained poor in spite of the down-pour! How 
many others have dropped the treasure they held, in 
their greed to possess themselves of a greater, which 
glittered in the treacherous stream of speculation 
beneath them! And to how many did not their 
speedily-gotten wealth prove the deadliest of all 
life's curses! 

To be sure, the acquisition of a noble fortune is 
an object of laudable ambition to the man who wants 
to found a family, and secure its independence when 
he is no more. But both in the pursuit of wealth 
and in its possession and enjoyment all is uncer- 
tainty and insecurity. How many fathers are blessed 
with sons who will make a right use of the riches 



320 KOVISSIMA. 

and lands acquired by the toil and sacrifices of a 
life-time? And, even when one has reached the 
summit of one's hopes, when boundless wealth, a 
princely home, a broad domain, and the esteem of 
the community are a present certainty, one looks 
forward, and says, "How long?" 

Aye, there is the canker-worm in the very core 
of the golden fruit gathered from the tree of pros- 
perity— -the prospect of only enjoying all these things 
for a few years at most. Not one ounce of our gold 
shall folfow us to the judgment seat, or avail to turn 
the scales in our favor. Not one foot of the soil of 
all our broad lands can profit the possessor beyond 
the space occupied by his coffin. 

There is no perpetuity in the titles by which we 
hold, no permanent security in either possession or 
enjoyment, no infallible certainty in the prospects of 
happiness which open up beyond the grave. 

Consider, therefore, as the fitting conclusion of 
this book, the Eternity of the Kingdom of Heaven, 
which Christ died to purchase for His own, and 
which we should so earnestly labor to secure. 



NOVISSIMA. 321 



CHAPTER XXI. 



THE ETERNITY OF HEAVEN. 



"An inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that cannot 
fade, reserved in heaven for you." 

—1 St. Peter, i, 4. 

HOW THE WORLDLY WISE CALCULATE. 

Let us look around us and see what precautions 
the wisest and most experienced in worldly economy 
daily take to provide against the loss of a fortune 
acquired by life-long toil, and to secure just profits 
from the investment of their money. 

How carefully men of sound business habits ex- 
amine the safest ways of turning their hoarded gold 
either into real estate or into shares in some com- 
mercial enterprise! Real estate — property in land 
and houses — has, at the present moment, to undergo 
a revolution. There was a time when men looked 
upon their broad acres as upon a source of wealth 
more reliable than the gold mines of the Oural or 
the Rocky Mountains — upon their possession as a 
basis of independence as imperishable as the founda- 
tion of the earth itself. In the wealthiest country 
on the face of the globe all this assurance, all this 
security so firmly held to in the past, are now giving 
way to insecurity and inevitable change. 

SECURITY AND STABILITY FOR INVESTMENTS. 

Men who do not so much value the prospect of a 
large and speedy return for their investments, but 



322 KOVISSIMA. 

who seek for security and permanence in the returns 
yielded, will prefer to have the established govern- 
ments as their debtors, and the public funds as their 
source of revenue. Provided the gold they give will 
bear fruit longer and for an indefinite period, they 
are content to receive less. They find ample com- 
pensation in their feeling of security, and in that 
assured stability which has nothing to fear from 
speculation or private dishonesty. 

So — to borrow an illustration from what are called 
the best business principles in temporal affairs— we 
can help ourselves to reason on things which arc 
eternal. 

We cannot but approve of the wisdom which, in 
managing worldly interests, provides against loss, 
change, revolution, instability of every kind, and 
seeks what is safe, certain, lasting. The farmer, 
who needs a constant supply of wholesome water for 
his household and his cattle, will seek a spring whose 
flow never stops in the summer heat or is interfered 
with by the severest winter frosts. The miller and 
manufacturer who rely on water-power for a steady 
supply of driving force, will build rather near the 
constant stream which is not over-swollen by the 
spring rains or dried up by the drought of the dog- 
days, than by the mountain torrent, or the rushing 
river, whose periodical inundations sweep away 
factory and mill. 

AVe like what is unfailing, constant, and enduring 
for ever. We should like our homes, our fortunes, 
and our institutions to be imperishable, everlasting. 
In many ways God has planted in our souls, our in- 
stincts, our lives, a vain wish to impart eternity to 
the work of our hands, since we cannot, by any 



NOVISSIMA. 323 

effort of our will or exercise of our power, obtain 
for ourselves the boon of immortality. 

MAX SEEKING GREATNESS AND PEEPETUITY INDE- 
PENDENTLY OF GOD. 

Twice in the history of our race do we find it 
recorded how men endeavored to make their exist- 
ence on earth independent of their Creator, and 
their lives secure against the utmost exercise of His 
power. The first is recorded in the third chapter 
of Genesis: "Behold, Adam is become as one of 
us," so speaks the Almighty, "knowing good and 
evil. Xow, therefore, lest perhaps he put forth his 
hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat and 
live forever." . . . The fragmentary narrative 
then says : " The Lord God sent him out of the 
paradise of pleasure to till the earth from which he 
was taken." 

Alas ! we know it well by this time, the tree of 
experimental knowledge of good and evil does not 
yield fruits of life, still less of immortality — unless 
it be the immortality of despair. "What the tree of 
life here mentioned is, we know not, unless it be the 
clear knowledge of God's will and our own duty, 
and the loving accomplishment of the same. That 
tree of duty bears immortal fruit; for it makes man 
eternal like God Himself. 

The other attempt is recorded in the eleventh 
chapter of the same sacred book: "Come, let us 
make a city and a tower, the top whereof may reach 
to heaven. . . . And the Lord came down to see 
the city and the tower, which the children of Adam 
were building. And He said: ( Behold, it is one 
people, and all have one tongue: and they have 



324 NOVISSIMA. 

begun to do this ; neither will they leave off from 
their designs till they accomplish them in deed. 
Come ye, therefore, let us go down, and there con- 
found their tongue, that they may not understand 
one another's speech." 

Christ made us anew into unity. Born, by bap- 
tism, in His Blood, we have a right to feed on that 
tree of life and immortality, of which Adam tasted 
not in Paradise. We are made the inhabitants of a 
city whose foundations are laid on earth, but from 
whose towers stretch up to heaven that ladder seen 
by the pilgrim Jacob, and along which the children 
of God are evermore ascending to the everlasting 
city, whose foundatians are above the stars, and 
whose life and duration are those of the eternal God. 



Christians who have set their hearts wholly on 
the possession of that " inheritance incorruptible, 
undefiled, and that cannot fade, reserved in heaven" 
for all who serve the Lord with their whole soul and 
strength, have even in this life that deep, abiding 
sense of security in the fulfillment of the divine 
promises. They "know in whom they believe." 
They have placed their trust for this life and the 
next in Him who is Truth Itself and cannot deceive; 
they have built their hopes on the Bock of Ages. 
St. Peter's words convey, therefore, unspeakable 
comfort to the souls sorely afflicted by this world's 
losses and disappointments, or tempted in their faith 
by the triumphs of error, impiety, wickedness, and 
oppression. 

"By the power of God," he says, "you are kept 
by faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the 



NOVISSIMA. 325 

last time. Wherein you shall greatly rejoice, if now 
you must be for a little time made sorrowful in 
divers temptations : that the trial of your faith 
(much more precious than gold tried by the fire) 
may be found unto praise, and glory, and honor at 
the appearing of Jesus Christ." * 

To the immense majority of those who battle 
against this world's manifold evil, in the hope of a 
happy eternity, how much less formidable are the 
labors and sufferings of their every-day life, than the 
self-imposed sacrifices, hardships, and the bitter dis- 
appointments faced by the fortune-seekers already 
mentioned ! And yet it depends on us to make that 
eternity secure. Let us weigh well the meaning of 
this single word. If we can only turn it round and 
round to grasp its mighty significance; if, like a 
heaven-sent gem, it only sheds on our minds the 
magic light it contains, and enables us, with the aid 
of that light, to view and estimate the things of 
earth, and to consider aright those of heaven, no 
talisman ever mentioned in Eastern story can open 
up to us such hidden treasures, or arm our soul with 
such power over our spiritual enemies. 

CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES SPEAK. 

What, then, is the eternity of heaven? 

If what has already been said on the nature of 
heavenly bliss, and of the supernatural, the divine 
life enjoyed in the land of the living, has been 
understood by the reader, this much must be now 
evident : that the life in heaven for the blessed is a 
partaking of the very life of the Deity. 

That life is, therefore, eternal. 

*1 St. Peter, i, 5-7. 



326 N0VISSI31A. 

Such, indeed, it was called by Christ Himself; 
for our English version of the New Testament 
makes " everlasting" the equivalent of "eternal." * 

"Eternal life" was also placed at the end of 
that short and pregnant symbol or formula of faith 
called the "Apostles' Creed," and adopted by all the 
Churches of Christendom, from the fifth century, at 
least. t But the revealed truth it expressed had been 
so clearly lormulated by our Lord that it was always 
an object of universal belief. The quibbling of the 
restless Eastern disputants gave occasion to place it 
at the end of the "Apostles' Creed" as the crowning 
truth of all faith and hope. 

Let us unite here, as in a focus of light, the clear 
utterances of our Lord and His Apostles on the 
heavenly life and its eternity : 

"They that shall be accounted worthy of that 
'world, and of the resurrection from the dead, shall 
neither be married nor take wives. Neither can 
they die any more : for they are equal to the angels, 
and are the children of God, being the children of 
the Eesurrection." t 



* St. Matthew, xxii, 40: "Suppliciuin seternum, . . . vitam 
seternam." . . . 

tSt. Irenasus ("Adversus Hsereses I," ix, 4,) informs us that through 
the doctrine handed down from the Apostles, Christians have one belief, 
since " all teach one and the same God the Father, and believe the same 
economy of the Incarnation of the Son of God, and know the same gift of 
the Spirit, and meditate on the same precepts, and maintain the same 
form of constitution with respect to the Church, and look for the same 
coming of the Lord, and wait for the same salvation of the whole man — 
that is, of the soul and body." Elsewhere he says that the catechumens 
received "the unchangeable rule of the faith" in baptism. 

Euflnus, who died in 410, says that in other Churches changes were 
made in the "Apostles' Creed " to meet the heresies sprung up there; 
whereas in the Roman Church, where no heresy had arisen, the Creed 
remained in its original form. It terminated— so far as we know it 
from Euflnus— with " the Eesurrection ©f the Flesh " The words 
" eternal life " were added in the fifth century. The words, however, 
and the trutn they express, were formally revealed by our Lord Himself 
in St. Matthew, xxii, 40. 

t St. Luke, xx, 35-36. 



STOYISSIMA. 327 

"Yet a little while, and tlie world seeth Me no 
more. But you see Me, because I live, and you 
shall live. He that hath My Commandments, and 
keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me. And he that 
loveth Me shall be loved of My Father : and I will 
love him, and will manifest Myself to him." * 

"Father, the hour is come, glorify Thy Son, that 
Thy Son may glorify Thee. As Thou hast given 
Him power over all flesh, that He may give eternal 
life to all whom Thou hast given Him. Now this is 
eternal life: That they may know Thee, . . . 
and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.' 7 f 

"As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so 
must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever 
believeth in Him may not perish, but may have life 
everlasting. For God so loved the world as to give 
His Only-Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in 
Him may not perish, but may have life ever- 
lasting." % 

Hear St. John the Baptist: "The Father loveth 
the Son, and He hath given all things into His 
hand. He that believeth in the Son hath life ever- 
lasting: but he that believeth not the Son, shall 
not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." || 

"Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst 
again: but he that will drink of the water which 
I shall give him, shall not thirst for ever : but the 
water that I shall give him will become in him a 
fountain of water springing up into life everlasting." § 

"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and 
they follow Me. And I give them life everlasting ; 
and they shall not perish for ever, and no man shall 
pluck them out of My hand. That which My Father 

* St. John, xiv, 19-21 II Ibidem, iii, 35-36. 

t Ibidem, xvii, 1-3. § Ibidem, iv, 13-14. 

t Ibidem, iii, 14-16. 



328 KOTISSIMA. 

hath given Me is greater than all : and no one can 
snatch them out of the hand of My Father. I and 



nc 



V * 



the Father are 

" When the Prince of Pastors will appear, you will 
receive a never-fading crown of glory/' f 

"Wherefore, brethren, labor the more, that by 
good works you may make sure your calling and 
election. For doing these things, you shall not sin 
at any time. For so an entrance shall be ministered 
unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom 
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." J 

"Of this one thing be not ignorant, my beloved, 
that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, 
and a thousand years as one day." || 

"You, therefore, brethren, knowing these things 
before, take heed, lest being led aside by the error of 
the unwise, you fall from your own steadfastness. 
But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To Him be glory 
both now and unto the day of eternity!" § 

"Labor with the Gospel according to the power 
of God, who hath delivered us and called us by His 
holy calling, not according to our works, but ac- 
cording to his own purpose and grace, which was 
given to us in Christ Jesus before the times of the 
world; but is now made manifest by the illumination 
of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath destroyed 
death, and hath brought to light life and incorrup- 
tion by the Gospel." ° 

"By this hath the charity of God appeared toward 
us, because God hath sent His Only-Begotten Son 
into the world, that we may live by Him." ^f 

* St. John, x, 27-30. § Ibidem, iii, 17-18. 

1 1 St. Peter, v, 4. ° 2 Timothy, i, 8-10. 

1 2 St. Peter, i, 10-11 . IT 1 St. John, iv, 9- 
I! Ibidem, iii, 8. 



novissbia. 329 

u He that believeth in the Son of God, hath the 
testimony of God in Himself. . . . And this 
is the testimony : That God hath given to us eternal 
life. And this life is in His Son. . . . These 
things I write to you, that you may know that you 
have eternal life, you who believe in the name of the 
Son of God." % 

"To him that will overcome, I shall give to sit 
with Me in My throne, as I also have overcome, 
and am set down with My Father in His throne." || 

THE CONCLUSION. 

Such are a few — a few only — of the divine utter- 
ances on which repose onr belief in the eternity 
of the heavenly kingdom, of the everlastingness of 
the life of bliss and glory enjoyed by its inhabitants. 

It is — from the testimony of revelation, and from 
the very nature and necessity of the reward itself — 
a participation of the very life of the Godhead, a 
most intimate union with the Trinity, which is never 
to be dissolved, and the continuance of which is to 
be measured on the duration of God Himself — if, 
indeed, we can use the term duration in speaking of 
that Being, whom our intellect cannot conceive of 
without conceiving at the same time that He can 
have had no beginning and can have no end. 

"Wherefore, just as the rank to which men and 
angels are raised in heaven is divine, just as the life 
they enjoy is divine; even so must that life be ever- 
lasting in order to be divine in its duration. 

Only think of it : To be associated with the Three 
divine Persons in one family, to be indissolubly 
united to them in oneness of life and joy, and to 

* 1 St. John, v, 10-13, t Apoc, iii, 21, 



330 HOVISSIMA. 

know that such an existence can no more come to an 
end than that the very essence and being of the God- 
head can be subject to decay or destruction. 

To look around on the boundless and magnificent 
empire which He created, prepared, and firmly estab- 
lished as the material home of His family, and to 
feel that it is their own, in its length and breadth, in 
its height and depth, as long as the throne of God is 
secure in the heavens — such is one element of felicity 
for the citizens of that empire. Even in the titles 
by which, on earth, royal families claim the posses- 
sion of a throne, a principality, a kingdom, an 
empire, there is insecurity and instability. We see, 
in every century, revolutions upsetting the most 
ancient dynasties, and the popular will becoming 
more and more the only acknowledged source of 
right. But in that society of the land of the living, 
the divine Will is the only law, the immovable and 
eternal basis of possession, the secure pledge of 
enjoyment never to be disturbed. A thousand times 
more than home and domains can be claimed, and 
held, and enjoyed as one's very own and forever 
here below, can every member of Christ's family on 
high claim the heavens of heavens as his. 

To survey, as the blessed in glory can, all the 
nine glittering spheres of the angelic world, with 
their sublime spirits innumerable rank above rank, 
circling in their ecstatic joy around the throne of 
Christ and the myriads of His brethren ; to see this 
angelic world, like concentric masses of living light, 
encompassing round about the scarcely less glorious 
human world, as if these glorious spirits still con- 
tinued in heaven their offices of watchfulness and 



KOVISSIMA. 331 

loving care over those who had once been their 
earthly charge! And is it not one part of the 
felicity of the angelic world to feel that they have 
had their share in bringing their pilgrim-brethren to 
the home and inheritance of the common Father? 
What a society is that of God's kingdom in eternity? 
And what a sense of surpassing joy is it to know 
that all the divine charities, the blissful intercourse, 
the pure and unalterable love of these multitudes, 
are treasures which can never fail the possessor ! 

" Blessed is one one day in Thy courts above a 
thousand!" 

It is in this connection, and while deeply medi- 
tating upon eternal things, while the Roman empire 
was falling around him beneath the assaults of the 
barbarians, that St. Augustine wrote, upwards of 
fourteen hundred years ago : 

"Such is the beauty of holiness, and the joy of 
that light eternal, of that immutable truth and 
wisdom, that although we were not to continue in it 
above one day, yet for so short a time, a thousand 
years of our present life, though filled to overflowing 
with delights and the abundance of all earthly goods, 
should be rightly accounted as nothing." * 

We whose hearts are preoccupied, sometimes by 
fear and sometimes by holy hope, at beholding the 
vicissitudes of human society, may cheer ourselves 
by lifting our thoughts to that society of the blessed, 
where truth and holiness reign forever, where the 
Eternal God, seen, known, loved, possessed securely, 
is the very Soul of Life to all. 

The Eternal God possessed eternally! 

* "De Libcro Arbitrio.'* 



332 KOVISSIMA. 

What more can tongue express? What dream 
more glorious can fall upon the soul? What higher 
goal would the heart aspire to? 

"Now to the King of Ages, immortal, invisible, 
The only God, 
Be honor and glory forever and ever ! Amen. ' ' 



[the end.] 



7? f 



